‘The grain market has gone crazy’: an expert
23:46
Current inflation is at 5.4 percent but this is nothing if the prices of flour and products based on it, such as bread, cookies, and pasta, are rising. Some products have already become more expensive, others will become more expensive in a moment, and all of them will become more expensive in the coming weeks. This is mainly the result of exceptionally high wheat prices in Poland and the world.
"It was cheap and it won’t be anymore," baker Stanisław Nutka, president of the Polish Baking Craftsmen Association, said.
Stanisław Nutka advises preparing for the rise in bread prices. He has been raising the prices of bread by nearly 10 percent since Monday, September 6, in his Poznań stores. Which does not mean that it will end there, because, as Nutka says, "the grain market has gone crazy".
Grain is the first link in the cost chain of producing products based on its milling. The higher the grain prices, the more expensive the bread, flour, and flour products are. And this year's grain, especially wheat, breaks records. At the turn of August and September, you had to pay PLN 1,170 per 1 metric tonne of this grain delivered to the port. This is a historic record.
Usually, at the end of August and the beginning of September, grain is the cheapest, because there is a large supply of it, and farmers who do not have storage facilities for grain storage must get rid of it quickly. It's time for good shopping at low prices. That is why bakers and pasta producers entered this year's August with virtually no flour reserves, counting on cheaper purchases from millers, as usual, at this time of the year.
In addition, the expensive grain was accompanied by significant increases in the prices of energy, packaging, various types of foil, and even pallets – these break records of increases, because compared to the previous year, the price increased by nearly 150 percent. Wages for employees also went up, following the increase in the minimum wage.
