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Engine oil: high prices and low stock levels, Costco and Walmart in trouble


The surge in the cost of the base oil used in the fully synthetic engine oil required for many newer cars far exceeds the sharp price rises for crude oil, petrol and diesel. The US price of so-called Group III base oil has almost quadrupled since February to a record $12.45 per gallon on Friday, according to Argus Media... Engine oil is a product category I managed when I set up the range for the superstores and established the Non-Food department at Esselunga. Read also : Non-food: a focus on categories. From supermarkets to superstores – part 6

EsselungaInflationNon-foodSuperstoresWalmart
 

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Putin seizes Russian branches of Nestlé, Auchan and Leroy Merlin: “They represent hostile countries”


Source. This has been the subject of discussion since 2023, the year in which Carlsberg and Danone were forced to sell their assets to Russian companies favoured by the Kremlin. It is estimated that Danone lost €1.2 billion in this sale. ... According to a 2025 estimate by the Moscow-based law firm NSP, the Russian state has seized more than $50 billion worth of private property, including assets belonging to foreign companies that have left Russia, since the start of the war. Nestlé’s and Auchan’s Russian operations have been placed under temporary control by L.E.V. Management, a little-known company with no public profile. Auchan, which operates 230 shops and an online business in Russia, employing around 30,000 people, declined to comment. Nestlé has six factories in Russia producing coffee, pet care and baby formula products. It generated sales of around 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.4 billion) in Russia in 2021, the last year for which it published figures, and has around 7,000 employees there. This accounted for around 2 per cent of the group’s sales, although analysts estimate that this contribution has fallen since Nestlé scaled back its operations in Russia. ... Reuters

AuchanNestlè
 

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McDonald’s and Wendy’s affected by deportations ordered by the White House


According to the research firm Technomic, sales growth at fast-food chains slowed sharply in 2024 and 2025. McDonald’s announced this month that it would slow the pace of new openings, whilst Wendy’s and Subway have closed hundreds of outlets over the past year. This shift comes at a difficult time for the fast-food sector, with inflation eroding disposable income. With a birth rate below replacement level for much of the past 50 years, the United States has relied almost exclusively on immigration for population growth. However, economists estimate that last year, for the first time in decades, more people left the United States than entered, due to restrictive immigration measures and the Trump administration’s intensified deportations. According to government data, nearly 3 million people left the United States last year, including those deported and those who left voluntarily... There is also the fact that employers fear a labour shortage as many immigrants lose their protected status. A recent Supreme Court ruling has paved the way for the Trump administration to end a humanitarian programme that has allowed around one million immigrants to work legally in the United States... Below: the decline in customer visits to fast-food restaurants and one of the ICE detention centres (The New York Times).

Mc Donald's
 

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This is the worst bar of soap according to Altroconsumo: Dove, Nidra and Esselunga have also been given a failing mark


Conad and Selexsoap bars were also rated as ‘poor ’. The survey examined25 solid soap bars(as part of a wider comparison of 65 soaps, including both solid and liquid varieties), assessing the ingredients listed on the label, their environmental impact and certain health-related aspects. The final score placed greater weight on environmental factors (70 per cent), whilst the remaining 30 per cent related to problematic ingredients, allergens and substances considered less favourable. GreenMe (Dove is a brand of the Unilever group).

ConadEsselungaNon-foodPrivate LabelUnilever
 

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NewPrinces-Gs: the second quarter shifts gear


NewPrinces-Gs: the second quarter marks a change of pace NewPrinces reports broadly stable volumes. More significant is the comparison between the first two quarters of the year. Half-year EBITDA reached €170.1 million, up 64.1 per cent, with an EBITDA margin of 5.6 per cent, an improvement on the 4.8 per cent recorded in the first quarter; more importantly, EBIT rose from a loss of €4.4 million in the first quarter to a profit of €19.1 million in the second, whilst net profit turned from a loss of €22.6 million to a profit of €16.8 million. The half-year thus remains slightly in the red, by €5.8 million, but the trend between the two quarters is clear. Similarly, EBITDA now shows a stronger performance than EBIT: depreciation, amortisation and write-downs rose to 155.4 million, compared with 49 million in the first half of 2025, partly due to a significantly altered scope of operations…

Marketing
 

n.946

Carrefour revamps its own-brand range


Carrefour is building on the initiative launched with Act For Food in 2017 by offering the option to include three logos or pictograms on each pack, with an explanation on the back. The three are chosen from around fifty options covering promises regarding ingredients (no additives, no colourings, no MSG…), production conditions (no synthetic herbicides, no GMOs, access to pasture, etc.), packaging (e.g. recyclability), nutritional profile (fat and salt content, etc.) or environmental factors. This latest addition to ‘Act For Food’ aims to highlight how Carrefour’s own-brand products differ from other private labels. Below, on the right, is the Italian translation of Olivier Dauvers’ post, which broke the news I have summarised here. N.B.: the Carrefour pictogram remains rather unclear.

CarrefourGMOsPrivate Label
 

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Walmart expands into home delivery: partnership with three fast-food chains


Retail giantWalmart Inc.is expanding its restaurant food home-delivery service beyond its own stores for the first time. According to initial reports fromBloomberg, the retailer will begin offering delivery in 30 minutes or less for Papa John’s orders in thousands of locations across the United States, following a brief pilot scheme in selected markets this autumn. Hungry customers will be able to order from the pizza chain, which offers home delivery and takeaway, via walmart.com or the Walmart mobile app, in the section dedicated to restaurants. Meals can be ordered individually or added to the online shopping basket alongside other items, using Walmart’sExpress deliveryservice. Deliveries will be carried out by independent couriers via the Spark Delivery app… Other partner restaurants that have signed delivery agreements with Walmart include theSubway sandwich chainand Dunkin’, through a partnership with their parent company, Inspire Brands… Progressive Grocer Below: Subway is a sandwich chain that is very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries. Dunkin’ Donuts is such a strong brand that, in addition to its fast-food outlets, it also has own-brand products distributed through US supermarket chains.

DeliveryPrivate LabelWalmart
 

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Organic fruit and vegetables: 13 per cent growth in consumption by volume in 2025


Despite this growth, volumes are still 5 per cent lower than in 2021, when they exceeded 625,000 tonnes; in value terms, however, the market stands at significantly higher levels than five years ago, partly due to an average price that has risen by around 20 per cent. Looking at the long term, there is a clear trend towards the gradual consolidation of organic produce in Italian shopping baskets: in 2016, it accounted for 8.4 per cent of total fruit and vegetable volumes, whilst by 2025 this share is set to reach 12.2 per cent, the highest level in the series under consideration.. You can find out more about the benefits of organic produce for ecosystems, farmers and consumers here.

AgricultureFruit and vegetablesOrganicPesticides
 

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Nine Parma hams and a mystery: how did Gambero Rosso choose them?


...The panel of tasters claims to have selected “nine noteworthy products”, but it is not entirely clear how many products were initially selected or what criteria were used. The Consortium has 125 member companies: how they arrived at nine is unclear. Yet, in the section of the website dedicated to blind tastings,it states:“We create groups that are homogeneous in terms of type, production philosophy and price range”. In this case, it seems to me that the selection is not particularly homogeneous: the only common feature is that they are Parma PDO; otherwise, the production philosophy and approach of a €15–20 billion chain will differ from those of a €30 million company. With such a wide range of maturation periods and prices (a 70 per cent difference between the cheapest and the most expensive), how can one claim that the range of products is homogeneous? The author is right: Gambero Rosso would do well to explain the process leading up to its assessments in greater detail. I would add that, given the events surrounding the ‘prosciuttopoli’ scandal, the descriptive section of the article – which I have reproduced below – seems rather theoretical: Where do the legs come from? The legs come exclusively from pigs born, reared and slaughtered in the eleven regions permitted by the production specifications, whilst processing takes place entirely within the designated area. After at least fourteen months and quality checks, the ‘Corona Ducale’ is awarded – the mark certifying ‘Prosciutto di Parma DOP’...

Prosciutto
 

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Amazon: e-commerce deliveries of perishable fresh produce set to rise by 50 per cent in 2026


"We have adapted a number of our existing Same-Day facilities with specialised temperature zones – ambient, chilled and frozen – and we plan to adapt many more over time. If your order includes frozen pizza, yoghurt and English muffins, three different team members prepare your order simultaneously, one in each zone, which also makes it easier to unpack when it arrives. Orders for perishable groceries are also fulfilled by existing fulfilment centres that were designed from the ground up to handle perishable groceries..." Six (6) fresh items feature in the top twenty on the site, which serves 150 million people and is now the second-largest food retailer in the US behind Walmart. The term ‘groceries’, which usually refers to everyday consumer goods, also includes fresh produce for Amazon.

AmazonE-CommerceWalmart