CHICAGO—Food executives speaking at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago on March 16 predicted that high commodity costs and contracts with ingredient suppliers will keep them from cutting consumer prices any time in the near future, reported FLEXNEWS.
"We're not at a place yet where we've fully recovered," Hormel CEO Jeffrey Ettinger said, adding that Hormel has increased the price of its chili product.
Campbell CEO Douglas Conant said it would be some time yet before the world's biggest soup maker began to cut prices. "It's not likely we're going to be reducing prices in the near term."
However, superstore retailers are seizing the opportunity to roll out more brand-name products with lower sticker prices. Wal-Mart last week announced it is adding hundreds of new products to its Great Value brand.
"We've carefully designed this so that the price of the product wouldn't go up," said Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of private brands for Wal-Mart.