The “recipe change” of Granini’s Orange juice is causing dissatisfaction among consumers. What the manufacturer changed and why it earned him the Deception Pack 2024 award.
Orange juice and coffee are the breakfast drinks par excellence – sugar water, less so. But that’s exactly how Granini has been filling up its “Drinking Pleasure Orange” to 50 percent since last year. And the manufacturer cleverly tried to cover that up by keeping the labeling almost the same. Granini only banned the label that it was 100 percent orange juice. 15,694 of the 32,441 consumers who voted found this so cheeky that they chose the sugar water-o-juice mix as the deceptive package of the year 2024.
Because Granini didn’t change the price. In his statement to the Hamburg consumer advice center, Granini explained that a combination of a low harvest and increasing demand would have led to a sharp increase in raw material prices. The company attributes the poor harvests to extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. In order to keep the price of the product stable, the company decided to replace the orange juice with nectar.
Of course, Granini is not the only manufacturer that is passing on rising prices to customers. In second place with 6,892 votes was Ulrich Walter’s Lebensbaum tomato seasoning salt, whose contents shrank from 150 to 80 grams. However, its price rose from 2.99 to 3.99 euros, which corresponds to a price increase of 150 percent. Almost bold: the air content in the new pack is 40 percent.
-The British company Unilever is represented with two products. In third place is the Cremissimo Bourbon vanilla ice cream, the content of which melted from 1,300 to 900 milliliters in 2024 – at the same price. Consumers therefore pay a 44 percent surcharge. They pay even more for Dove care showers, whose contents have shrunk from 250 to 225 milliliters. Here the price has risen so much that you now pay twice as much for a tube. Curious: The manufacturer explained the increase to the consumer advice center with a new and innovative bottle shape that also contained a new and higher quality product.
We found the last price increase at a discounter, namely Aldi Nord. The content of the biscotto wafers shrank from 200 to 100 grams at the same price. Aldi Nord justifies the 100 percent price increase with increased cocoa prices, although the consumer advice center notes that these have now fallen again.
Overall, the Hamburg consumer center recorded fewer deceptive packages in 2024 (67) than in 2023 (104). However, the average price increase rose significantly, from 23.5 to 31.5 percent. In five deceptive packages, consumer advocates even recorded an increase of over 100 percent, which is quite unusual. Accordingly, the consumer advice center is calling for a legal labeling requirement, such as that which exists in Hungary and France. There, retailers have to declare deceptive packaging on the shelf.
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