You may have already seen it in your bakery. And if you haven’t yet, you might soon be paying a few more pennies for your baguette. Blame it on a tense economic situation, between price increases for wheat and those for energy. The situation affects an entire sector, because upstream there are also the flour mills, which transform the wheat into flour. Here too, the bill is increasingly salted.
“The price of wheat is like oil, it can go up as it can go down, it is fixed by the world price”. In his flour mill in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, Pascal Dom is used to fluctuations in the price of wheat, but this year “This is a very strong increase, which we had not seen for a long time. 30 or 40 euros more per tonne in a few weeks “. That is 20 to 30% more expensive depending on the wheat selected.
This increase is explained by a overall decrease in volumes available. Because if in France, there is no shortage of production, this is not the case everywhere, specifies the Corrézian miller: “The French market is in surplus, but there was a fairly significant climatic effect in July with heavy rains which slightly degraded the quality of the wheat. And then the world market is under pressure, because countries like Russia are making retention, which slows down exports a bit to drive up prices. ”
In this context, Pascal Dom believes that the price of wheat will not decline until the next harvests … and again, if they are good! In the meantime his flour mill also has to face other exploding expenses: “Electricity, fuels to deliver to customers, carriers apply increases, packaging also increases a little bit. So we have to increase.” Measured increase he specifies, because this miller claims to have also trimmed his margins to limit the impact on bakers.
In Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, the manager of the Moulin du Saplat fears a more lasting impact
Between the bad weather of the summer in France, the fires and the droughts in Russia and Canada, which upset the world wheat market. In Haute-Vienne, Benoit Mazière, manager of the Moulin du Saplat, in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat remembers a previous record, but this time fears a more lasting impact: “In 2007, the price of wheat had gone from 100 euros per tonne to a peak of 280 euros. After that, it was well attenuated. There, this year, there is no downward outlook. be next year, when there will be the _southern hemisphere crops_. If they are good, there may be a little lull. For the moment, we have increased by around 10% but if at the beginning of next year the price is where it is today, we will have to pass the increase back on to the price of flour. “