Reed orders the Barons of Everyday Goods to run short – E24

It is not a law of nature that grocery barons should be the only ones who are protected in a major crisis. Especially when you consider that the families behind it have become several tens of billions of people’s kronor richer through the pandemic, says politician Rødt Marie Sniff Martinussen.

New inflation figures show that food and drink prices rose 6.5 percent in 2022. This was more than overall inflation in Norway.

On Thursday, Ministers Pfister and Borsch called the grocery workers on the carpet to ask them to explain – and food prices are expected to rise further in a few weeks.

There, Norgesgruppen said the costs were “maxed out” and they’re making less money now.

Sniff Martinussen thinks they should earn less.

Not rocket science

There is no natural law that says they have to keep margins high now that raw material prices are so high. Stores should cut their bottom line, rather than pass the cost increase on to ordinary consumers.

– The chains say they actually earn less. Do pioneers think they should lose money for a while?

– The half-year results seemed good to many. The situation now is that most people are losing purchasing power. When the chains, especially Norgesgruppen and Rema 1000, are owned by families who have become, according to Kapital, billions of kroner richer through the pandemic, there is no problem if they have to eat a bit of stock in Rødt’s eyes.

– Could it not have negative consequences for operations, including green innovation?

It is not rocket science to run grocery stores in Norway. There are very few companies that control the market and will anyway make good profits in the future.

– Why point fingers only at the last link in the value chain, that is, the chains?

– We like to point fingers at Orkla and the big food manufacturers too. But what we are quite sure of is that it was the first part of the value chain, the farmers, who had been losing ground for a long time because of the situation with Norwegian groceries.

– no doubt

Asking grocery chains to run a deficit is not something Industry Minister Jan Christian Pfister (Ap) wants.

– No, all private companies should be profitable. They should help pay taxes, invest in jobs, and in this way fund the best welfare state in the world, he tells E24.

Vestry says he belongs to a party concerned with the need to create values ​​before they can be shared.

– while Rødt is more concerned with the distribution of values.

Pfister points out that the fact that he criticized Sniff Martinussen’s plans does not mean, however, that players should not show social responsibility and go as far as they can in order not to raise prices more than is absolutely necessary.

– I understand that all the representatives we met today have understood this message. There was no doubt, but there was a nice dialogue on a serious topic.

legend

– It’s a myth that we have high profit margins in the grocery industry, answers Oyvind Breivik, Communications Director at Rema 1000 Retail Company owner.

He notes that Rema 1000 Norway’s operating margin has averaged 3.8 percent over the past 15 years.

– The average of all industries in Norway at the same time was 10.6 percent, according to Statistics Norway. It is nearly three times the height.

A healthy welfare state depends on a for-profit business community to secure current jobs and the ability to invest in the future.

Bård Gultvedt, Director of Business Policy and Government Relations at Norgesgruppen, replies as follows:

NorgesGruppen has reduced profitability and, like many other companies, is seeing significant cost increases related to electricity, transportation, packaging, etc.