We want to know what issues matter to you ahead of the federal budget. Have your say.<\/p>\n
Bega Group’s grocery lines include its namesake cheese Bega, Vegemite, yoghurt brand Yoplait, Big M and other dairy products.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Alan Kohler for the That’s Business<\/a> podcast, Mr Findlay said the supply chain shocks associated with war had already added 10 per cent to Bega’s costs.<\/p>\n This includes higher costs on packaging, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushes up the price of resin, which is used to make plastic.<\/a><\/p>\n “It’s critical for us to be able to get packaging for our goods,” Mr Findlay said.<\/p>\n Bega, which makes Vegemite, says the cost of plastic for packaging has gone up with the price of oil. (Flickr: tolomea<\/a>)<\/p>\n Costs for the chemicals needed for Bega’s factory cleaning, and even for the rubber it used in machinery and seals, were also rising, Mr Findlay said.<\/p>\n Bega Group is also paying farmers more for dairy, as producers battle supply shocks, including soaring diesel and fertiliser prices.<\/p>\n “We’re trying to fully match that,” Mr Findlay said, of the financial support for Bega’s dairy farmers.<\/p>\n “It’s quite difficult. Different farmers in different regions have very different cost structures.”<\/p>\n War-related price spikes hitting stores<\/p>\n Mr Findlay said Bega Group was passing “a large chunk” of its extra costs onto consumers but was “actually absorbing some of it at this stage”.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n “We’ll just have to see how long the crisis goes for,” he said.<\/p>\n “We’re sort of evaluating that every month.”<\/p>\n Australia’s two biggest supermarkets have already increased the price of home-brand milk in response to higher dairy farming and packaging costs.<\/p>\n Woolworths chief executive Amanda Bardwell has also warned about price hikes.<\/p>\n Amanda Bardwell has flagged higher prices at the check-out over the coming months. (ABC News: John Gunn)<\/p>\n She noted that fresh produce and dairy were seeing the first round of war-related price spikes instore, with packaged items to come next.<\/p>\n “We do expect to see, unfortunately, prices increase in some products over the next three, six and possibly 12 months,” she said during a financial update briefing last week.<\/p>\n “It’s a very volatile period at the moment.”<\/p>\n Supermarkets urged to absorb price hikes<\/a><\/p>\n As the price of food and agricultural production goes up during the Iran conflict, supermarkets are being urged to absorb more of the cost.<\/p>\n Headline inflation accelerated to an annual rate of 4.6 per cent in March<\/a>, up from 3.7 per cent.<\/p>\n Automotive fuel prices jumped by more than 30 per cent in March in the wake of the war in the Middle East.<\/a> Food prices also rose 0.7 per cent in March alone.<\/p>\n This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia increased the cash rate to 4.35 per cent<\/a> to tackle inflation, with the central bank warning about secondary price increases still to come.<\/p>\n “Broader pass-through of fuel costs is expected from the June quarter onwards,” the RBA’s statement on monetary policy for May said.<\/p>\n “Firms widely report that they are actively considering what price changes they might make if input cost increases persist or broaden.”<\/p>\n The CEO of Woolworths says the price of some products will rise in the coming months. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)<\/p>\n Workers expected to seek higher wages<\/p>\n Bega’s Mr Findlay is bracing for additional pressures, with the chief executive expecting workers to push for higher wages to deal with surging inflation.<\/p>\n Peter Findlay says workers dealing with the higher cost of living will also expect a pay rise. (Supplied)<\/p>\n “You’ll have to link your wages to increased costs of living,” he said.<\/p>\n The company has already made about 800 workers redundant in recent years, taking it down to 3,200 employees and reducing the number of its food factories in Australia.<\/p>\n Mr Findlay said that closing factories had helped the company grow its productivity.<\/p>\n “We’ve actually grown the business from a volume perspective, at more than 4 per cent over the last three years,” he said.<\/p>\n Additionally, he believes Bega is benefiting from a “wellness” trend, with yoghurt and cheese wrapped up in a renewed focus on high-protein diets.<\/p>\n Bega says dairy is having something of a renaissance thanks to the current high-protein diet trend. (Flickr: CycloneBill<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n “Protein is one of the biggest trends we’ve seen in the last decade,” he said.<\/p>\n “Dairy’s having a little bit of a renaissance, which we’re very pleased about.”<\/p>\n Bega Group’s last financial reports showed revenue up 5 per cent and net profit up 55 per cent to $46 million for the half year to December.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Australia’s biggest dairy manufacturers is warning about soaring food inflation, as the war in the Middle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,133998,99,11387,130870,317813,5465,206980,317812,132070,102],"class_list":["post-657221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bega","tag-business","tag-chief-executive","tag-fuel-prices","tag-increased-costs","tag-inflation","tag-iran-war","tag-peter-findlay","tag-supermarket-prices","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Open](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/14d5cda998b92e2cb950a7a12ec83a16.jpeg\")
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