“The worst” of inflation, of the historic and continuous rise in prices, particularly food prices, “is behind us”, a truce in which the mass consumption sector strives to listen and be heard by administrations, with which they share objectives, but not always the means to achieve them.
This is what the president of the association of manufacturers and distributors Aecoc, Ignacio González, defends in an interview with EFEAgro. He returned to this position a little over a year later, with challenges such as maintaining the mass consumption chain (food and hygiene) which represents 20% of GDP.
“Listen and be heard” This will therefore be the motto of the next congress that the association will hold in October in Madrid; And companies, he insists, share objectives such as conciliation and sustainability, but “if the legislation evolves too quickly”, it becomes “sustainability which is not sustainable, which reduces competitiveness”.
In total, González predicts a “more controlled CPI” by the end of the year and that the sector will end the year more balanced than in previous years, although the “Bank of Spain is a little less optimistic”.
On paper, certain raw materials are on the rise, mainly cocoa and coffee, but “It’s clear that we should see oil falling and having a lot of weight”This is why “it should be good news that with interest rates, this revitalizes consumption a little, which is good, but it is not happy,” he adds.
As companies have repeated since the start of the inflationary crisis, he defends that “the fault was not inside the chain, but rather outside and in all the links”. “They were victims of a situation that no one wanted.”
However, this situation has had consequences: the strong unity shown by all the links in the face of unprecedented situations such as the pandemic.“didn’t last that long” and was “broken” by the situation inflation that caused consumers and the media to focus on shelf prices.
At this point he emphasizes that keeping the chain together will be another of his goals, since “The farmer must understand that his enemy is not the industry and the distribution chains must understand that their enemy is not the manufacturer.”
Regarding productivity, which has been practically “stable” for a decade in Spain, González emphasizes that it is a challenge that must be faced “as a country”, because it has many derivatives.
Thus, according to him, in addition to the reduction of the working day – which is currently the subject of a public debate and negotiations between social agents -, other problems such as absenteeism, training and investment in digitalization.
In summary, Aecoc expects “productivity to be attacked as a major problem and not just a part of it”.
Some worker profiles are missing
In this productivity equation, González also places the real problem of ““lack of adequacy” between the training of the potential workforce and the requirements that the industry has.
There is therefore a lack of labor in certain areas, which, without becoming a serious problem, such as in catering or in the countryside, affects professions with high technical content of digitalization or maintenance in the consumption of mass.
This mismatch leads to the “paradox” of a very high unemployment rate and, at the same time, “a need and a lack of coverage for certain very specific positions”.
Digitization and the use of artificial intelligence as a tool are another of the marked lines of work for a diverse sector that always takes on the “great challenges” and already uses them to listen “the 14 million consumers who ‘vote’ every day whether or not they like your brand”, according to Gonzalez.
