Towards an absence of Ricard in Leclerc stores this summer?

The chairman of the strategic committee for E.Leclerc centres, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, said on Monday he was "not sure" that consumers would find Pernod Ricard products this summer on the shelves of the French supermarket leader due to a commercial disagreement. with the agribusiness giant. “For the moment we are negotiating with them across Europe so that the French can have their bottles”, explained on BFM / RMC Michel-Edouard Leclerc, according to whom the trade dispute with the world number two in spirits has been going on for six month. “It shows that it is not so easy to negotiate even for a large distributor”, even if it has purchasing alliances with other European brands to improve the balance of power with agro-industrial suppliers, "with Ricard who is the king of margins and profit in his sector and who can do without selling to E.Leclerc for a year".

“All this will end up with the mediator” of commercial relations, further estimated Michel-Edouard Leclerc, for whom “E.Leclerc has more to lose (than industrialists, editor’s note) in terms of turnover not having Coke or Ricard" in its supermarkets. "But in terms of credibility with our customers, it's not good either to have Ricard that's too expensive," he added. Pernod Ricard, which supplies supermarkets with products such as Ricard, Ballantine's, Suze, Havana Club and Jameson, said it was "confident" on Wednesday and said it was "working actively" to find a solution "as soon as possible" in order to resume supplies.

As it stands, the two companies have not reached a commercial agreement, leading to a halt in supply and therefore a gradual disappearance of products from the shelves, detailed a source familiar with the matter, reporting "discussions" in course and refuting the terms 'conflict' and 'boycott'. Already in 2019, Pernod Ricard and E.Leclerc had failed to reach a pricing agreement and the French leader in food distribution had temporarily delisted all of the spirits group's brands in its stores. The dispute had lasted more than two months before the products gradually returned to the shelves.