Fifty days to intervene. Then the bakers will be forced to raise the white flag: “We have little time to avoid having to suspend or even close the business,” says the president of Assipan-Confcommercio, Antonio Tassone, on behalf of the thousands of Italian bakers. A reaction that comes close after the news of the average price increases of + 18% for bread recorded by Eurostat in August in Europe and 13.6% in Italy, mainly due to high energy prices.
Certainly, from French baguettes to German pretzels, bread on the European market has never been so expensive. And at the basis of the widespread rise in prices, Eurostat notes, there are above all the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The biggest increases in the cost of bread, in the period August 2021-August 2022, were recorded in Hungary (+ 66%), Lithuania (+ 33%), Estonia and Slovakia (+ 32%). The least affected countries were France (+ 8%), Holland and Luxembourg (+ 10%).
To highlight the sensational jump in prices, by way of comparison, the European Statistical Institute recalls that between August 2020 and August 2021, the average increase in the price of bread in the EU was 3%. Only “in 2022 Italians will spend over 900 million euros more than the previous year to put the product most present on the tables in the shopping cart”, Coldiretti denounces. “A kilo of wheat is paid today to farmers around 36 cents and is used to produce a kilo of bread that is sold to consumers at prices ranging from 3 to 5 euros depending on the city,” says the association. And the race to the upside, according to Fedagripesca, does not stop there: «We are moving towards further increases in the final cost of bread to consumers equal to 10% more. Since, given the data in hand, considering the cooperatives active in the bread-making sector, the increase in the final consumer price is not sufficient to cover the increase in expenses by companies ».
«We are experiencing a time of rising costs, mainly linked to energy. And if there is an energy-intensive product, that is bread “, underlines Alberto Molinari – president of Aibi – Italian Bakery Ingredients Association member of Assitol who then says:” We will continue to be committed to keeping costs, production and quality in balance, aware that bread is the staple of our daily diet and that our supply chain has a social role ». Italy, compared to the rest of Europe, is an exception. 85% of Italians choose fresh artisan bread and buy it almost every day from the baker. Codacons estimates that a core of 4 people find themselves spending 175 euros more on bread and cereals than last year. Therefore Assoutenti is asking for urgent action to cut VAT on basic necessities, starting with food. And Tassone adds: “We are confident that the Aid Ter decree will have a wide range of action and that the parliamentary process will be concluded, but we need more courageous maneuvers to overcome the immediate emergency that is putting 1,350 companies in the sector to the test”. In the most difficult autumn, however, reassuring news arrives. The drop in fuel prices on the Italian network continues and self-service petrol falls on the national average below 1.7 euros per liter, hitting a minimum for almost a year, while the average price of diesel falls towards the threshold of 1.8 euros stopping at € 1.809 per liter.