Unilever, Nestle See More Price Increases This Year

Feb. 5, 2023

Comments from Unilever's Alan Jope and Nestle's Mark Schneider hint at more but smaller hikes.

While Conagra executives recently said significant price increases are probably over for their company, chiefs at Unilever and Nestle are warning that more hikes are coming. But those should be smaller, too.

"We have some catching up to do over the full year," Nestle CEO Mark Schneider told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung over the weekend (Feb. 5).

“We know for sure there’s more inflationary pressure coming through in our input costs,” Unilever's outgoing CEO Alan Jope told CNBC in mid-January. “We might be, at the moment, around peak inflation, but probably not peak prices.”

At Nestle, higher prices will be needed to offset higher production costs that have not yet been fully passed on to consumers, Schneider said, although the increases will not be as steep as they were in 2022. Reuters noted Nestle’s sales in the first nine months of 2022 grew 8.5%, of which price rises accounted for 7.5 percentage points.

“There’s further pricing to come through, but the rate of price increases is probably peaking around now,” Jope said. Through three quarters of 2022, Unilever reported 10.6% underlying sales growth fueled by 12.5% price increases for a 1.6% decline in volume.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.