Dutch Food Industry Warns of Sharper Price Rises Without Government Action

The Dutch food industry has warned that groceries in the Netherlands will keep getting more expensive over the coming months unless the government steps in. The Federation of the Dutch Food Industry (FNLI), which represents food and drink producers, says rising international costs combined with new national taxes and levies are squeezing producers from both sides and will inevitably show up in supermarket prices.

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Prices already rising

The warning comes just after fresh inflation figures from the Dutch statistics agency CBS showed that groceries became 2.8 percent more expensive in April, a sharper rise than in the previous month. Economists expect those costs to keep feeding through to consumers, with the impact becoming more visible later this year.

According to a survey of FNLI members, more than three-quarters of Dutch food producers say the ongoing war in the Middle East is having a "large to very large" impact on their business. Energy, logistics, packaging and raw material costs are all becoming more volatile and more expensive, and the entire chain is affected, from farms and factories to truckers and shops.

A "stacking" of national levies

What worries the industry most, on top of international pressures, is what the FNLI calls a "stacking" of national taxes. A planned sugar tax, a higher excise duty on alcoholic drinks and a new levy on packaging are all in the pipeline, on top of an existing consumption tax on non-alcoholic drinks. "Together with growing regulatory pressure, this increases the burden on businesses and can feed through to higher prices in the shop," the federation says.

The FNLI is asking the cabinet to dampen costs rather than add to them: to ensure stable and competitive energy prices, to refrain from extra national levies on electricity, gas and packaging, and to assess any new measures carefully on effectiveness, feasibility and affordability. The industry body also warns that companies could move production out of the Netherlands to countries with lower costs.

"For consumers, this is about affordability," said FNLI director Cees-Jan Adema. "Food producers are doing everything they can to limit price rises as much as possible, but affordability is a shared task. We call on the cabinet for targeted measures that dampen costs and strengthen stability in the chain, and to refrain from extra national levies that put further upward pressure on grocery prices."

A European echo

The Dutch call comes shortly after FoodDrinkEurope, the European federation for the food and drinks industry, made a similar appeal to the EU and member states. Its argument is that without action to keep companies' access to energy and essential raw materials affordable and competitive, persistent cost increases will keep filtering through to higher food prices, hitting vulnerable households the hardest. The FNLI is endorsing that appeal at national level.

A familiar warning

This is not the first such alarm. Last month, Dutch bank ABN Amro warned that food prices in the Netherlands were likely to keep rising into 2027, as the fixed energy contracts most food companies had signed after the 2022 energy crisis begin to expire. The Dutch food and drinks industry remains around 70 percent reliant on natural gas, and the new warnings from the FNLI suggest that, far from easing, those underlying pressures are now being compounded by new geopolitical and domestic risks.

For Dutch consumers, the practical question is straightforward: how much of all this will end up at the checkout. The food industry's message to the government is, in essence, that the answer is up to The Hague.