Since February, members of purchasing group Agecore are putting pressure on brand manufacturer Nestlé to enforce better purchasing conditions. The conflict seems to escalate: the number of references that disappear from the shelves continues to rise.
30% of sales
The dispute between the European purchasing group and the Swiss food multinational started about a month and a half ago. The current negotiations apparently do not lead to the desired result because the group now increases the pressure.
German chain Edeka initially cut 163 products from Nestlé, including frozen pizzas (Wagner), chocolate bars (KitKat) and water (Vittel). These accounted for about 20% of Nestlé’s turnover at the retailer. Now our colleagues from Lebensmittel Zeitung report that the supermarket chain is taking additional references from the shelves, so that the total would already amount to 30% of the turnover.
Colruyt is also increasing the pressure. In the Collect & Go webshop, we now count at least 41 Nestlé references that are temporarily no longer available. That is a lot more than the 18 references that disappeared from the shelves at the end of February. These are chocolate products from Kitkat, Lion and Smarties, various cereals, Maggi broth powder, lots of Nestlé baby products, Nesquik, water from Vittel, cold meats from Herta …
The French Intermarché, the Swiss Coop, the Spanish Eroski and the Italian Conad are also part of Agecore. All members together would represent a total of 10% of Nestlé’s European sales.
