Organic products “unnecessarily expensive” at AH: report

Ahold Delhaize is facing questions about the pricing of its organic produce and products at supermarket chain Albert Heijn, which activist shareholders and environmental campaigners say are unnecessarily expensive.

A report by sustainability research bureau Profunda suggests the supermarket chain is making organic products unnecessarily expensive while the extra profit is not used to limit greenhouse gases. The company’s CO2 emissions have even increased, the report said.

Ahold puts a premium of up to 40% on organic products compared to non-organic products, “making healthy and sustainable foods luxury items exclusively available to rich people,” the report said. This netted Albert Heijn some €863 million in extra revenue in 2023.

The report focused on Ahold because it is the market leader and because it company is vocal about its sustainability efforts, the researchers said. “It’s a big player in our food system and, together with Tata Steel and Shell, it is one of the biggest polluters in the country,” Milieudefensie campaign leader Wouter Kok told RTL Nieuws.

The findings came as a surprise, Kok said. “What we wanted to know was how Ahold Delhaize is meeting its Paris climate goals. That question has been answered but we also learned that prices for organic food were higher than may be reasonably expected,” he said.

“On average, production costs for organic food are 16% higher. A shopping basket with non-organic food worth €10 would cost €11.60 if the consumer were to choose the organic variants. Instead, we found the basket would cost €15.60, some 56% more. We thought that was a pretty remarkable outcome,” he said.

Katja Logatcheva, who researches food pricing at Wageningen University and was not involved in the report, told RTL it is difficult to say how much extra organic food would have to cost because much depends on supply and demand.

“The organic food chain is much smaller and carries more risk of failed harvests because they are more vulnerable to pests and illnesses,” she said. “That means one year organic onions will cost twice as much as other onions and just a few percentage points more in another.”