More money, less volume

CAPE

WHY IS it that many consumers can’t make ends meet with their hardearned income?

The answer could be that many food manufacturers seem to be taking consumers for a ride. And we don’t even notice it. Not much is said in the media about this unethical practice.

How many people have noticed how the volume of numerous food items has decreased, but with a corresponding increase in prices? To top it all, manufacturers often use the same size packaging, which makes it more difficult to notice the reduction in the weight.

For example, the weight of a bag of dog food was reduced from 10kg to 7kg. A well known brand of tomato sauce, which apparently contains 36 tomatoes squeezed into a single bottle, was reduced from 750ml to 700ml in the same size bottle with a sticker hiding the huge gap at the neck of the bottle.

Chocolate slabs have been cut from 100g to 90g, with the weight not clearly displayed on the wrapper. Potato chips have dropped from 150g to 125g in the same sized packet. Toothpaste has gone from 100g to 90g.

The important question is, how does this reduction in weight affect the pocket of the consumer?

Consider the following examples: if two bags of dog food weighing 10kg and 7kg costs R63, then the price per kilogram would be R6.30 and R9, respectively.

This signals an effective increase of 42.9 percent in price, based purely on the reduction in volume.

Similarly, two bags of potato crisps weighing 150g and 125g and costing R7 indicates an increase in price of 20 percent. An increase from R7 to R8.75 for crisps from the old to the new weight would signal an increase in price of a whopping 50 percent.

We are now paying much more for 125g of chips.

In practice prices are also increased when volumes are decreased. Do the maths to see what astronomical price increases manufacturers get away with. This is daylight robbery of which many of us are unaware.

It was further reported that yearon-year, the index for food and nonalcoholic beverages increased to 6.8 percent in June.

This figure is much lower than consumers experience at the tills. It seems Statistics South Africa does not take the unit price into account when comparing prices, therefore painting a rosier picture, which is very different from reality.