European purchase alliance Agecore puts pressure on Nestlé

European purchase alliance, Agecore, has threatened to cut 160 Nestlé products from its list unless the Swiss agree to better conditions. Colruyt, Coop and Edeka are members of Agecore.

Lower prices

Agecore’s demands simply boil down to a demand for lower prices, because otherwise, it will not purchase Nestlé’s products. Considering the fact that the organization represents a lot of European chains, its refusal could immensely impact Nestlé. Over the past few days, the retail partners have apparently already lowered their Nestlé orders and according to Lebensmittel Zeitung, Swiss Coop has even temporarily halted orders for several products.

On the other hand, supermarkets cannot keep it up to no longer have a wide range of products available to customers and seeing how Nestlé is one of the food industry’s largest companies, it remains to be seen who will cave first: Nestlé or the supermarkets… or no one at all, as KU Leuven’s study suggest. 

Agecore’s demands are not new for the food industry. We have seen increasing examples of temporary product scarcity as chains want better conditions. Colruyt had its own kerfuffle with PepsiCo late last year, which led to the temporary unavailability of 29 products.