Aura Retail, or how to trample on French food sovereignty ?

©Denis Charlet/AFP

On September 23, Intermarché, Auchan and Casino (which includes Monoprix and Franprix), have joined forces to form “Aura Retail”. A ten-year pooling of purchases, which officially aims to “develop partnerships with the agricultural world and French industrial players in the long term”, and which unofficially risks destroying French food sovereignty by targeting low prices and high margins.

The rising inflation we have experienced in recent years has created a loss of momentum that worries the retail giants. While Leclerc has been nibbling away at its competitors' market share since 2023, reaching a 24.6% market share by 2024 according to LSA magazine's forecasts, three major food retailers have created “Aura Retail” to retaliate. In concrete terms, the idea is simple: take refuge abroad to avoid being constrained by French laws, buy a quantity of products at low prices from major foreign industrial suppliers, and resell all of this in France, with good margins. In doing so, French consumers should be happy because prices will drop, and the major retail groups will still make a lot of money.

So, what do the people want ? The answer is also simple: respect for its farmers and safeguarding its food sovereignty.

Such a union inevitably raises questions of ethics and quality of the selected products, because Aura Retail will act like a wringer that has come to pull prices down to the lowest possible level. Even though agricultural crises continue to follow one another and negotiations have been going full steam ahead recently, this new group is signaling the arrival of the big guns and intends to put an end to the discussions.

In fact, “three purchasing centres” will be dedicated to food products, delegated to Intermarché. While this “Aura Retail International Food Services” branch will be based in Brussels, with the aim of negotiating “international service provision with the largest multinational industrial groups”, the “Aura Retail International Non-Food Services” branch, intended for the sale of services to non-food manufacturers, will be located in Luxembourg and will be managed by Auchan. So, even if the group has good intentions and assures that it wants to engage with farmers and consumers, the message is clear: anything but France.

As reported by AFP, the National Association of Food Industries (ANIA) reacted sharply, through its president Jean-François Loiseau: “While the main collective concern should be to strengthen our food sovereignty by allowing the construction of the price (…) throughout the food chain, distributors have the sole objective of the lowest price to grab a few points of market share from their competitors”. And to warn: “If we do not rectify the situation quickly, the problem of international purchasing centers, which organize the circumvention of French law, will no longer only concern large companies but will soon extend to ETIs and SMEs”.

This practice of centralizing purchases, which has existed in France since 2014, had previously tended to last only four years. The duration of this new alliance, in addition to the number of brands mentioned, is unprecedented. Especially since a press release published by the companies Auchan and Intermarché made it possible to specify that this French food alliance would join the European center Everest. The latter is at the initiative of the German group Edeka and the Dutch Picnic, while being located in the Netherlands. But that's not all, since the Epic center is also in the know. For Challenges, it is a “way to take on the merciless price war that is coming.” For Ania, this is a pure and simple circumvention of the French EGAlim laws, which are supposed to “improve the balance of commercial relations in the agricultural and food sector”.

Faced with such resources, only the largest suppliers will be able to assume the workload. We therefore risk seeing, again and again, the smallest agricultural cooperatives shrink like shagreen leather in the face of the behemoths of the economy and the call of foreign sirens.

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