Fuels: Leclerc announces “gasoline at cost price” every day in its hypermarkets

Leclerc responds to Emmanuel Macron's call. In a message written on Starting this Friday, September 29, it will be possible to find gasoline at cost price at many of the distributor's stations.

From this date, “the 650 service stations in Leclerc hypermarkets will sell gasoline daily “at cost”, wrote Michel-Édouard Leclerc. This clearly means without profit and every day, not just on weekends, as in our previous operations. This operation is an “act of solidarity” as well as a “positive response to the president’s call urging each player in the sector to offer discounts or lower prices,” adds the businessman. This initiative is also “built to last”: it will be reassessed “or adapted to take into account supply conditions and the expected involvement of oil companies,” he warns. Contacted for details, the group has not yet come back to us.

Leclerc thus takes a position, a few hours before a highly anticipated meeting between the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, distributors, refiners and representatives of the fuel industry. During this meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m., the head of the executive intends to “find ways to create more transparency on the distribution of costs and margins in the sector as well as to intensify the operations of selling fuel at cost price by the major retail players.

Sunday evening, as a reminder, Emmanuel Macron had buried the loss-making sale of fuel for distributors. However, he called on refiners to make an effort on their margins, and called on those players who can to offer full tanks at cost price. Operations of this type are regularly offered by large retailers, which can make up for it with other products.

For his part, the boss of Système U was, however, cautious on Tuesday morning, recalling that fuel at cost price only sees its price drop by a few cents - the margin being low - and that it is difficult to maintain this type of operations to be long-term. “It will not be permanent cost price,” warned Dominique Schelcher, on BFMTV. “We can carry out operations regularly, we did so this summer”, but these must remain punctual, he said. The margin is in fact used to pay the pump attendant, to cover his investments and the maintenance of the station, underlined the representative. Système U will, however, consider setting up a first weekend at cost price at the beginning of October, and the brand could increase these operations by the end of the year. It remains to be seen how the other competitors will position themselves.