“My father didn’t want to be overly dependent on anyone.”

“My father didn’t want to be overly dependent on anything: not the bank, not the client, not the supplier. And he never wanted to have more than 10% of the sales in the hands of the client, so that if one day something happens to him, you can quickly react through everything else. This was the reflection shared on Tuesday by the son of the founder and president of the dairy giant Pascual, Thomas Pascual Gomez-Quetaraduring a meeting with journalists on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the mineral water brand Bezoya at its bottling plant in Ortigosa del Monte (Segovia).

The family company’s president, Burgos, was referring to questions about the recent move Mercadona in the segment liquid milk. The company he runs Juan Roig decided to remove Pascual’s links in this category from the shelves of most supermarkets in Spain. Only stores in Burgos and Segovia have been preserved.

Although the president of the dairy group did not want to disclose the impact of the distribution giant’s decision on its turnover, he assured that this already exists.”planned and planned“From an economic point of view, we were counting on this because the proposition of this operator is to bet on its brand,” he added, referring to the brand. Farmerfor which it produces products such as herbal drinks.

“All the companies in the market that we work with know that sooner or later, if we can’t get consumers to order our product there, it will happen,” he said. A few weeks ago, Mercadona admitted that it had decided to only support recommendations in those supermarkets where they were in greatest demand among shoppers.

In any case, the dairy company believes that not all of its brand of liquid milk, which is no longer sold at Mercadona, will be lost, but rather believes that consumers will continue to buy its products from other brands where they are still present. “I’m worried I won’t get on all the shelves, but if someone doesn’t want me there, there’s nothing I can do. I’ll try to be the rest“, Pascual concluded.

Of course, he warned that milk consumption has slowed over the past year. “The main factor in the decline in milk consumption is children and the birth rate,” he emphasized. However, he recalled that the advantage is that there are more and more food alternatives and more variety. “This is good and we need to know how to operate in this market,” he said.

“We used to sell what we produced, but now we produce what the consumer wants,” he added. In this sense, he acknowledged that distribution movements such as Mercadona are forcing industries to “listen more and better to the consumer and act faster, innovate and be more creative” because consumers are demanding increasingly complex things.

The company is currently immersed in the process of diversifying its business into categories such as protein drinks. He recently introduced his new brand Dynamic proteinwhich has a range of products for which it expects to invoice €20 million over three years.

In this sense, Pascual assured that his company is a “branded company” and its obligations will continue to be carried out through its own brand, with the exception of special cases where it can produce products for third parties. “What we’re never going to do is sell the same value proposition with two brands or two positionings,” he insisted.

“We will never sell the same value proposition with two brands or two positions.”

“The fact that a brand is temporarily absent from the shelf has happened many times. (…) This situation does not surprise me,” he explained the recent departure of well-known brands from the shelves of some retail chains due to disagreements. between industrialists and distributors. “Industries need widespread distribution to reach consumers. It doesn’t have to be competition between industry and retail, it must be a collaboration. Sometimes we are over the line, and sometimes we are back. “It’s part of business life,” he continued.

Regarding the voltage in Prices, said he believed some of the costs had been “addressed.” “Many of the small reductions that have occurred will offset the complete lack of growth that we have made,” he said, making sure producers did not pass on 100% of the additional costs they incurred to price. “I anticipate some cost stability for some time, although we are starting from a much higher situation than what we had in 2021,” he added.

The company’s confidence now rests with the consumer gradually recovering purchasing power that he lost. “We are in a situation of high consumer savings. We may also be accustomed to spending less or spending better,” he concluded.