THE BOSS of Superquinn has accused farmers of misleading the public about the amount they get from the sale of basic foodstuffs such as milk, cheese and potatoes.
Simon Burke, chief executive of the Irish-owned retailer, said he took deep exception to accusations by the IFA that retailers were profiteering at the expense of primary producers. He said farmers should “count themselves lucky” that a price war between retailers on milk and other farm-gate products was not being fought.
Claims that retailers were enjoying big mark-ups on the goods they sell were “ill-educated, ill-informed and irresponsible”.
Last month, the IFA claimed that retailers were charging consumers up to five times the price paid to farmers for basic foods. Farmers got just 20 per cent of the retail price of cheese, 33 per cent of the price of milk and 36 per cent of the price of potatoes, according to an IFA report.
However, Mr Burke said the IFA figures were deeply misleading, because farmers got the biggest share of anyone in the food supply chain. The milk produced by farmers was not saleable to consumers, and has to be collected, consolidated, processed and shipped to the shops.
“Cows don’t do low-fat or supermilk, and someone has to pay for all the milk that goes down the drain because it has gone off in the shops,” he said.
Mr Burke said he was not anti-farmer. Superquinn sourced 80 per cent of its fresh products from Ireland, and actively supported local artisan producers. “I have no agenda to see farmers screwed, but there is a disingenuousness about this.”
If there were to be a price war on milk, as there was in the 1980s, farmers would get “bugger all” for their product, and prices would stay down permanently.
The IFA responded by challenging the retailer to reveal its margins on basic foodstuffs. “We know what farmers get – not very much. There are middle-men, but retailers do very little for their cut,” according to a spokesman.
Mr Burke is critical of plans for a grocery trade code of conduct, describing them as a food manufacturer-led initiatives designed to protect suppliers. Such a move would hit Irish-owned retailers worst, because multinationals could source product from their parent companies abroad.
The retail business is suffering from too much regulation, not too little, he said. New rules on the selling of alcohol had caused immense inconvenience for customers, without curtailing demand significantly. “I would be interested to see if it has had the slightest impact on the social problems it was supposed to be solving, such as binge drinking or out-of-hours purchasing,” he said.
Customers were responding to the recession by veering away from sophisticated products in favour of the basics, he said. Fancy or pre-prepared cuts of meats were losing ground to joints, sales of organics were “tumbling”, and Superquinn was selling “a lot more bleach and less fancy toilet cleaner”. Demand for lunchbox products was also soaring.