Jordi Riera, administrator and co-owner of the Can Noguera oven, did some quick math: “What we spent on the electricity bill in 2019, multiply it by three and a half. Then we had electricity bills of 7,000 euros a month. This past August, we paid 23,000 euros“.
16,000 euros more per month multiplied by twelve means an extra annual expense of 184,000 euros. Can a company’s accounts withstand such a blow? “As you can imagine, it is a drama,” says Riera, who comments that it is inevitable to “have to recuperate it in prices and adjust the profit margin.”
“We are a sector that is highly dependent on energy consumption,” says Gonzalo González, owner of the La Canela bakery and president of the Association of Bakers and Confectioners of the Pimeef: “There is the kneading machine, the fermentation machine, and let’s not even talk about what the ovens consume. Then, the product has to be climate controlled, the cold rooms…. I believe that our sector has suffered the most from the enormous price increases”.
Electricity bills have tripled
The accounts are more or less the same in Forn Can Bufí: “The electricity bill has tripled and in summer it quadrupled”, explains Toni Bufí, administrator of the company. Conclusions: “This is a huge amount. Ridiculous”.
The price of bread
Bufí explains that the company has had to reduce the profit margin to a minimum and raise prices, despite the fact that products such as bread, which are a basic necessity, have little margin for increase: “We have raised it by 10 to 15%”, but he warns that this is not a real price, since if all the increases had been applied, bread would have had to increase by up to 40%. “It’s not nice to raise prices because customers don’t like it. Before you do it, you think about it,” says González, who sums it up in three words: “We have a problem”.
For the full article, please visit the Diario de Ibiza website here.