Carrefour, the largest retailer is to join forces with Tesco, the largest in the UK, in a “strategic alliance” to cut costs and offer lower prices to customers. Increased buying power from the merger could mean lower prices on all own-brand goods.

Marmite in your local supermarket?

All the large supermarkets are under pressure from  increasing competition as shops like Aldi and Lidl, with their no-frills policy and own branded goods, churn out  prices that are  difficult to beat. It looks like another price war may be on the horizon in the UK supermarket sector.

Alexandre Bompard, Carrefour’s chief executive, was recently taken on to return Carrefour to profitability. His strategy is to partner with other organisations to deal with high costs.

Dave Lewis, Tesco chief executive, was also looking to rebuild profitability after price wars with Aldi and Lidl.

The result is a three-year strategic alliance to jointly purchase own-brand products so maybe it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing some of the old UK faves in our local Carrefour!