Coors Brewers is increasing the trade price of its brands by 2.5% in an effort to cover rising production costs.
The hike on brands, including Carling and Grolsch, will apply from February 6. Coors insisted there would be no exceptions.
EDLP retailers who want to maintain current prices will have to sacrifice some of their own margins.
Coors off-trade sales director Kevin Brownsey said the increase was not directly connected to attempts to bring value back to the beer market, but would present retailers with an extra incentive to do so.
“We have been moving prices up on Carling for 18 months by way of raising promotional cost prices, but it’s been a number of
years since we’ve formally communicated a price increase of this type.”
He added: “We are going to apply this across the whole off-trade, very consistently, and make sure none of our customers in any channel are disadvantaged.”
The company said that costs of steel for packaging were the main reason for the increase. Supermarket prices on beer held steady in the week before Christmas. Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury maintained their two for £20 case deals on key brands until this week.
But Christmas week saw deep price cuts by Somerfield on other key drinks brands to intensify the festive price war, according to an exclusive survey for The Grocer by Logobrand.
The multiple took £3.50 off the price of a litre bottle of Baileys in the final week of pre-Christmas trading. Its price of £9.99 left Morrisons as the only major supermarket with a price over £10, at £12.49. This took the average price per 100ml for Baileys to a new low of £1.04.
Somerfield also trimmed £1 off Hardys wines and Bell’s whisky in the final week.
Nigel Huddleston
The hike on brands, including Carling and Grolsch, will apply from February 6. Coors insisted there would be no exceptions.
EDLP retailers who want to maintain current prices will have to sacrifice some of their own margins.
Coors off-trade sales director Kevin Brownsey said the increase was not directly connected to attempts to bring value back to the beer market, but would present retailers with an extra incentive to do so.
“We have been moving prices up on Carling for 18 months by way of raising promotional cost prices, but it’s been a number of
years since we’ve formally communicated a price increase of this type.”
He added: “We are going to apply this across the whole off-trade, very consistently, and make sure none of our customers in any channel are disadvantaged.”
The company said that costs of steel for packaging were the main reason for the increase. Supermarket prices on beer held steady in the week before Christmas. Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury maintained their two for £20 case deals on key brands until this week.
But Christmas week saw deep price cuts by Somerfield on other key drinks brands to intensify the festive price war, according to an exclusive survey for The Grocer by Logobrand.
The multiple took £3.50 off the price of a litre bottle of Baileys in the final week of pre-Christmas trading. Its price of £9.99 left Morrisons as the only major supermarket with a price over £10, at £12.49. This took the average price per 100ml for Baileys to a new low of £1.04.
Somerfield also trimmed £1 off Hardys wines and Bell’s whisky in the final week.
Nigel Huddleston
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