French supermarket Carrefour has started warning its shoppers of “shrinkflation” with shelf-edge signs.

Carrefour this week began naming and shaming products that have been made smaller but retained the same price.

Lipton iced tea, Lindt chocolate and Viennetta ice cream are among the products it flagged as having smaller or lighter pack contents, according to the BBC. 

Carrefour said it wanted to put pressure on firms using this tactic without warning consumers. 

The retailer’s director of client communications Stefen Bompais said: “Obviously, the aim in stigmatising these products is to be able to tell manufacturers to rethink their pricing policy.”

 

Carrefour said it has identified 26 products that had been made smaller without a matching price reduction, made by suppliers including Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever.

The grocer said Guigoz infant milk formula, produced by Nestlé, had gone from a pack size of 900g to 830g, while PepsiCo-owned Lipton’s sugar-free peach iced team shrank from 1.5 litres to 1.25 litres.

Viennetta, made by Unilever, went from a pack size of 350g to 320g.

Carrefour, which is France’s second-largest grocer after E.Leclerc, is highlighting the products in question with signs reading: “This product has seen its volume/weight fall and the effective price charged by the supplier rise.”

Unilever, PepsiCo and Nestlé have not commented on Carrefour’s move, according to the BBC. 

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