Britannia plans 7% price hike; 'Never seen 2 years so bad,' says MD

After milk, Maggi, coffee, tea, Britannia biscuits are going to be costlier as the company is looking to increase price to pass on the inflationary effect on consumers.

Britannia is planning to hike the prices of its biscuits and cookies 7% this year as the 130-year-old company has posted a 19% drop in quarterly net income through December. In an interview with Bloomberg, managing director Varun Berry said the last two years have been pretty bad for the business, with the latest blow delivered by the Russia Ukraine war which has affected the food supply chain.

Britannia biscuits are to become costlier this year. 

Several daily items including milk, coffee powder, Maggi, tea have become costlier in March. Britannia biscuits will only add to the long list, once the company announces a price hike.

“Our first assumption was a 3% inflation this year, which obviously went wrong by a very big margin because of Mr Putin -- unfortunately it’s turning out to be more like 8-9%," MD Varun Berry said. "I’ve never seen two years which are as bad," he added.

The company said every raw material it uses for its products looks inflationary and the company now plans to "frontload" price increases this year.

"It’s a price shock for the consumer, while you dilute it to whatever extent by removing grammages from the pack. But consumers are smart, they figure out that this packet is lighter than used to be. So it will have some impact, we’re already seeing an impact with the price increases we got last year," the MD said.

Nestle has increased the price of a packet of Maggi by ₹2 on the smallest packet (70 gram).

Fuel prices are on a steep rise with daily increases. On Thursday, another increase of 80 paise per litre was reported making a total hike of ₹6.40 a litre in 10 days.