Three brands of bottled water from the Danone group are gradually being withdrawn from Intermarché stores. The president of the Musketeers explained it.
In 4 out of 10 Intermarché stores, consumers have undoubtedly noticed that three brands of bottled water from the Danone group, Evian, Badoit and Volvic, are regularly missing. But in times of various food shortages, this absence did not necessarily question more than that.
Invited on BFM Business, Didier Duhaupand, president of the Groupement Les Mousquetaires, gave the very simple explanation: his group refuses to comply with the price increases imposed by Danone.
“There has been a change of direction at the head of Danone and the shareholders are asking them for higher profitability which translates into requests for price increases. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
Danone “takes advantage of the crisis to restore its margins”
Danone France is defending itself by invoking significant increases in its production costs. This is refuted by Didier Duhaupand, whose group produces bottles of water itself. “We are also manufacturers, we have sources and we know the decomposition of the industrial price. We know the increase in the price of transport, we know the increase in the price of plastic and this knowledge makes us say that the requests that are made , roughly +12%, are not reasonable. This company, like a number of other large companies, is taking advantage of the current crisis to restore their margins and try to push through a number of slightly undue increases”.
