Now on Offer at the Supermarket: Freshly Squeezed Suppliers
Sainsbury’s Asda bid sharpens battle with Nestle and Unilever
Sainsbury store in Redhill.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
In recent weeks, executives from Nestle SA and Unilever—Europe’s biggest food companies—have groused that retailers are squeezing them ever harder on prices, slashing the premiums they’ve grown accustomed to. Their problems just got a lot bigger.
On Monday, J Sainsbury Plc announced it had offered $10 billion for Asda, the British unit of Walmart Inc. Sainsbury said the deal would forge a U.K. supermarket leader that could harness the American retail giant’s purchasing strength to trim prices of essential items by 10 percent.