Inflation and drought are two of the concepts that concern Consum these days. The first, for a long time, since it already partly conditioned the results of 2021, and as the company explained yesterday, it has marked and will continue to do so the economic result of the year.
The Valencian cooperative, which yesterday presented results for 2022 with a turnover of 3,864 million euros, 14.4% more, although with a decrease in results compared to the previous year, has its own reading of the economic situation, which is not far from far from that of the rest of the distribution sector.
And it is that yesterday when asked how he assesses the proposal to cap prices, the general director of Consum, Juan Luis Durich, was blunt: “Cup prices is total nonsense. You can cap by subsidizing the farmer, the producer, but there is than take it.” Durich justified himself by explaining that the sector is “a transmission belt, we do not generate the prices. We cannot have a lower margin, it is already one to three, otherwise we will have to stop paying the payroll at the end of the month,” he explained. very eloquently. Durich explained how on Consum’s shelves there are products whose margin “is bordering on zero” and recalled that this is a “very tight” sector where margins are “very tight”.
If inflation is a concern at Consum – “although I anticipate that it will decrease, but that does not mean that prices will not rise” – the drought is no less. This was explained by Durich, who brought up the problem when he estimated the percentage of local purchases made by the company at 67.7%. Its producers are 98.8% national.
“If the drought continues and the pressure on supplies and prices do not return to normal, we will have to look for alternatives because it may happen that some products have to be found in other areas. The issue is becoming significantly more complicated,” the manager acknowledged. .
Durich predicted price rises due to the weather situation in dry-farm products, such as potatoes, oil or wheat, “although then there are other products that will not rise because we are going to enter into a more containment evolution. But there are many unknowns: there will be many products that will go down, but others will continue to rise,” he said. He gave as an example the competition in the international market exerted by the Netherlands, which “has paralyzed its greenhouse apple production and since they are very rich, they pay whatever price it is.”
