Empty shelves at Albert Heijn as delistings escalate

A dispute between Albert Heijn and manufacturers JDE Peet’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez is resulting in empty shelves at the Dutch market leader. Brands such as De Ruijter and Douwe Egberts are hardly available anymore.

Same old story

After picking fights with Belgian market leader Colruyt, Dutch runner-up Jumbo and German powerhouses Aldi and Edeka, Douwe Egberts producer JDE Peet’s is now also taking on Albert Heijn. Both online and in quite a few supermarkets, the shelves are now empty, Distrifood reports.

De Ruijter’s chocolate products (a division of Kraft Heinz) and certain Mondelez products also remain absent from supermarket shelves here and there. The annual negotiations with brand manufacturers are at the cutting edge, as Jumbo CEO Ton van Veen pointed out to the RetailDetail’s editors last week.

Both parties seem not to lose any sleep over the delistings: brand manufacturers see their growth falling and therefore want to increase margins, while fierce competition is forcing supermarkets to cut costs and lower prices. Those empty shelves only cost Jumbo “less than 0.1 % market share” last year anyway, Van Veen calculated.