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Your daily bread is getting pricier. If your loaf hasn’t become costlier, it soon will.
With prices of maida , atta , sugar and vanaspati rising, bakers, including large corporates such as Britannia and Hindustan Unilever, have either hiked their product prices or are in the process of doing so.
“Going by the sharp increase in commodity prices, we plan to increase bread prices by 5-8 per cent,” said an official at Britannia Industries, the leader in the organised bakery segment. Britannia will further review its pricing based on commodity price trends.
Input prices up
Prices of key ingredients such as atta and maida have shot up by up to 20 per cent as millers scramble to source wheat. Also, sugar prices have rallied by over 10 per cent in the past few weeks on worries the dry spell will affect next year’s crop.
Harvest Gold, a popular brand in Delhi, hiked its prices by 10-15 per cent last week. A large loaf of its bread now costs Rs 25 against Rs 22 earlier.
“Input prices are going up, putting pressure on bakers to hike prices,” said Ramesh Mago, President of All India Bread Manufacturers Association.
Ramesh Mago, promoter of Ludhiana-based Kitty Industries Pvt Ltd, said his company had hiked prices by 10-12 per cent in the key markets of Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
The bakery segment is highly fragmented and leaders in regional markets could set the price. The hike in prices by Harvest Gold in the Delhi market could prompt others to do so, he says.
Apart from raw materials, the rise in power tariffs across various States is also putting pressure on bakers to pass on the cost to consumers, says Inderpreet Kaur, Associate Director, Food Service and Agriculture at KSA Technopak. The consulting firm pegs the Indian bakery market at Rs 8,500 crore growing annually at 12-15 per cent.
Bakers in Kerala, who depend on other States for raw materials, have also hiked prices by about 10 per cent, says P. M. Sankaran, President, Kerala Bakers Association. Wage hike has also contributed to the increase in input costs.
> vishwanath.kulkarni@thehindu.co.in
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