Polish manufacturers looking for a survival mechanism
Eastern Europe is one of the most vulnerable regions to the consequences of the war in Ukraine
These days in Poland, when you go to the supermarket, in addition to the fact that your card must be full of money, you also need a coin. Those small numbers that are written on the packaging of the goods are so small that it is better not to be seen by the customer. But this also has wisdom.
That pack of pocket tissues that comes in handy in winter now has eight instead of ten. Anyone who used to buy a half-kilo package of kefir now, if they pay attention, will understand that its weight has increased to 420 grams, and the weight of the famous Wedel milk chocolates has also decreased in each package.
The inflation rate in Poland is 17%; That is, almost twice the average inflation rate in the European Union. Retailers and food manufacturers in Poland are now resorting to traditional methods to hide price increases from customers. This phenomenon is the contraction caused by inflation; Reducing the quantity or quality of the product sold to customers. The price is kept to a certain extent so the customer doesn’t really understand how much money has gone out of her pocket.
This is a technique that was used even during the Roman Empire. At that time, the quality of silver and gold coins was lowered by alloying copper and other metals to meet the necessary expenses for running the empire. In the Middle Ages, bakers sold smaller pieces of bread at the original price to prevent possible riots. The cause of severe inflation in Poland is actually the war in Ukraine, which raised the price of energy. As a result, the price of consumer goods went up and producers looked for a legal way to reduce their losses. Now, one of the most common things in Poland is the production of smaller bottles and jars than before.
Rafal Mandry, a Polish economist who compiled a database (data) in the last four years in the section on “reducing the quantity and quality of consumer goods”, reads this phenomenon that people are not aware of. He says that the inflation rate, which has been unprecedented in the shadow of inflation in the last 25 years in Poland, has caused the change in the packaging of goods to change in an unprecedented way. These conditions have caused some customers to think about the weight and volume of the goods they buy. However, the producers really hope that this issue does not become a new habit of customers or that it does not open its way to social networks and its discussions. Producers of consumer goods say that the cost of their production has increased between 30 and 40 percent, and therefore there was no other option but to apply contractionary inflation.
Vavel Bajorek, the head of Reckitt Benckiser’s English brand in the Polish branch, confirmed this and says that there is no other option but to gradually impose this price increase on customers. The Reckitt store in Poland has now changed the package of dishwasher tablets from 50 to 46. Since there is a possibility of an increase in the inflation rate in the future, producers guess that they will have to adopt similar policies in the future to hide the increase in the price of their goods.
Another method used by manufacturers is to use cheaper raw materials and change the composition of the original product. This is something that is more difficult for customers to identify. Mandri says the butter he used to buy now has more palm oil. Less fluoride is used in her mouthwash and more glucose syrup is used instead of sugar in the sweets she buys. But in each case, the change was not very obvious and she noticed it only after carefully comparing the information on the packages. He usually shops in Bydronka, one of the largest chain stores in Poland; But the situation is the same in other big stores. Katarzyna Grabarna, the brand development manager in Bidronka, says that the store has tried to reduce the cost of packaging and delivery of goods in new ways to partially compensate for the increase in costs.
For example, last year this chain store managed to use 600 tons less plastic. While the war in Ukraine and its economic consequences continue to affect Poland, it seems that consumers in this country are still facing a decrease in the quantity and quality of the goods they buy; Because there is no other way for producers. Warnings about the dangers of reducing the quality of food in this regard have not reached anywhere for now.
Source: Financial Times
