• President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny has obliged SCA PR, the company responsible for purchasing at the Intermarche chain, to change practices that are unfavourable to suppliers of agricultural products and foodstuffs.
• The challenged practices concerned the establishment of the rules of cooperation during its term and obtaining discounts despite failure to meet the conditions stipulated in the agreement.
• The company will amend the agreements and will give back the unfairly collected discounts to the contractors.

The President of UOKiK monitors the relationships of large retail chains with suppliers of agricultural products and foodstuffs on an ongoing basis. Among other things, discounts that retail chains receive from their contractors are analysed. Indeed, some of these may constitute unfair exploitation of contractual advantage by Poland's largest stores. Prohibited activities may consist, inter alia, in obtaining retrospective discounts despite failure to meet previously defined conditions. It is also unacceptable to set the terms of a discount for the following year of cooperation as late as following its beginning, with the obligation to take account of the new conditions retroactively.

Such practices could have been applied by SCA PR Polska (purchasing headquarters for Intermarche stores). The investigation has proven that the company had concluded agreements on marketing conditions with suppliers of agricultural products and foodstuffs for a given year with delay, expecting counterparties to take into account the new conditions from the beginning of this year. This means that suppliers, when performing orders during the period from 1 January of a given year to the date of signing the contracts, were not sure under which terms and conditions sales would be settled retroactively. Additionally, there were situations where suppliers were charged with additional discounts not provided for in the original supply contracts.

Moreover, the company obtained a retrospective discount from suppliers, despite the fact that the value of turnover on which the parties made its provision conditional in the previous agreement was not achieved in a given settlement period. As a result of these activities, suppliers were deprived of part of their income from cooperation with the chain.

– It is unacceptable that suppliers of products do not even know for several months what remuneration they will receive for the goods sold or their income is reduced through retrospective discounts that are not based on signed agreements. Therefore, I have obliged the company responsible for shopping at the Intermarche chain to change its practices and return the wrongly charged fees – says the President of UOKiK, Tomasz Chróstny.

In accordance with the obligation imposed, SCA PR will return the amounts charged, together with interest, for the discounts referred to above and questioned by the President of UOKiK.

In addition, the company will cease to enter into agreements with suppliers specifying the terms of discounts for the year after it has already begun, retroactively. As a result, suppliers will know the financial terms of cooperation with the Intermarche chain at the start of cooperation for a specific period.

The commitment also applies to 2023 agreements and suppliers of agricultural products and foodstuffs which are required to provide a discount once the turnover threshold is reached. The company will approach them with a proposal to amend the agreement so that the amount of the discount depends on the value of products purchased in the period from the date of the agreement (rather than the beginning of the year, as before) until the end of 2023.

The decision issued is not the only action taken by President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny regarding discounts and fees in relations between retail chains and suppliers. For example, in 2020 a decision was issued for Jeronimo Martins Polska – owner of the Biedronka chain. The company imposed unfair discounts on its contractors. In 2021, the President of UOKiK issued decisions pertaining to Eurocash. The enterprise charged suppliers of agricultural products and foodstuffs a number of additional and unjustified fees. Some of the services paid for by the counterparties were not performed at all, while some should have been provided by the company under the signed agreement without additional remuneration. In the same year, a decision was issued on Kaufland Poland Markets practices. The company required suppliers to reduce the price of agricultural products and foodstuffs after they had already been sold.

In 2021 and 2022, UOKiK also published two reports that, among other things, indicated which practices of retail chains could be considered unfair exploitation of contractual advantage. The first one described the discounts used by retail chains. The other one concerned sales-related fees, charged for performing services to suppliers related to the process of selling goods. The proceedings regarding logistics fees charged by Carrefour Polska and Auchan Polska are currently pending, among other things.

Entrepreneur, farmer, if you operate in the agricultural and food industry and your major counterparty abuses its competitive advantage by imposing unfavourable conditions of cooperation – report it to UOKiK. We have launched a special form to help you report any irregularities. Click here to fill it out: ankieta.uokik.gov.pl/formularz-zgloszenie-przewaga/.