Private label has moved well beyond the cheap aisle label, and GS Retail is treating that shift as a strategic reset. In my view, the real story is not that prices still matter, but that price alone no longer protects a private label range from being ignored. For FMCG teams, that matters because the battleground … Read more
Retail spending is starting to crack under the weight of higher costs, and the pressure is showing up where FMCG teams feel it first: discretionary baskets, transport spend and retailer confidence. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data points to a market where price rises are still biting, but households are now pulling back as … Read more
When the world’s largest condom manufacturer says it has no choice but to pass costs on to customers, every personal care buyer and pharmacy category manager in Australia should be paying attention. A 20 to 30 per cent price increase on a high-volume, high-frequency category is not a rounding error — it’s a margin conversation … Read more
Oil at US$100 a barrel is not a hypothetical for Kimberly-Clark — it is a live cost scenario the company is already stress-testing, with up to US$170 million in additional gross input costs potentially landing in the second half of this year. That kind of exposure, sitting outside the current annual forecast, is the sort … Read more
The 40-day threshold is the number every FMCG procurement team should have circled right now. Once the Middle East conflict crosses that mark and input costs remain elevated, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns that farmers will begin cutting inputs, reducing plantings, or shifting to less fertiliser-intensive crops — decisions that will echo … Read more