Christina Alonso

Updated Monday, January 22, 2024-18:04

Carrefour

counterattacks

Mercadona

in the price war and launches a new anti-inflation campaign.

The French chain, which has banned PepsiCo products -

Pepsi soft drinks,

Lay's

potatoes or

Doritos

snacks

- due to the "unacceptable increases in their prices", has reduced up to 500 references of its private label, as it did a long time ago. the Valencian distribution company run by

Juan Roig for more than a year.

Carrefour's campaign offers

savings of up to 13%

on its private label products "most frequently purchased and best valued by customers," as the company explains in a note released this Monday.

They include, for example,

toasted cookies, liquid detergent, fried tomato with extra virgin olive oil or sliced ​​bread

, among others.

Carrefour assures that this commitment to price "will be

maintained over time

in order to help customers save in 2024."

The initiative is part of the company's strategy "to protect the purchasing power of consumers," he says.

In this way, the second supermarket chain by share in Spain, with 9.9%, according to the most recent data from the consulting firm Kantar, fuels the price war that began at the end of 2022 with the launch of the "anti-inflation basket " in France and here in our country it was intensified with a campaign by Mercadona, the absolute market leader with a 26.7% share.

In mid-April of last year, Mercadona announced the reduction of precisely 500 products, in the midst of the shopping basket crisis, with the Government pressuring supermarket chains to contribute to lowering inflation at the cost of cutting their margins. of benefit.

The campaign remains active, at a time when the main distribution chains operating in Spain are immersed in a

promotional war to attract customers.

Already in December 2022, Carrefour launched a basket of 30 daily consumer products for 30 euros, promoted by the initiative of the second vice president,

Yolanda Díaz

.

From that moment on, the main chains began to offer their own cheap baskets, such as

Eroski

, which offered 1,000 basic products at reduced prices.

Dia or Alcampo

have also

launched their own initiatives to help contain inflation on a temporary basis.

The truth is that the large operators in the distribution market have started the year with important promotional activity that coincides with a particularly tense moment in international trade.

The Red Sea crisis, which is already causing significant delays in the delivery of goods, also threatens to trigger inflation precisely when the indicator was beginning to contain itself in our country.

The CPI closed last year at 3.1%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), however, food still reflects a rate higher than 7%, which has forced the Government to

maintain the VAT reductions

to contain the increase in prices in supermarkets and even to extend the discount on one of the most affected products such as

olive oil.

The real effect of these tax cuts on the pocket, however, is limited, so these types of initiatives by supermarkets are key to finding savings alternatives in the shopping basket.