The Marabou brand quickly found itself alone in the firing line when the owner Mondelez, earlier this year, was blacklisted by the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) as a result of its activities in Russia. Several stores removed the goods from their stores
shelves and actors such as SJ, SAS and the Armed Forces chose to boycott the company.
Then it became more complicated to take a stand. Even grocery store shelves were teeming with brands from ownership companies that turned out to have active production in factories in Russia: such as British Unilever, with brands like GB Glace, Dove and Lipton, and American Procter&Gamble, which owns Pampers and Gillette, among others.
Fish sticks without Russian fish
However, food giants such as Ica, Coop and Axfood continued to buy goods from owner companies blacklisted by NACP.
To what extent customers are opting out of these products, Axfood cannot answer for competitive reasons, but at Coop and Ica no major changes are seen in terms of sales of the brands.
– We can see a certain decrease in sales of Marabou in particular. It is partly because chocolate sells less in the summer, and partly it may be due to the attention Mondelez and Marabou received earlier this year, says Therese Knapp, press secretary at Coop, to TT.
All three food companies state that they do not buy products made in Russia. Coop says it has stopped selling fish caught by Russian boats and Axfood says it has phased out Russian ingredients in its own products.
– We have also ensured that our fish sticks do not contain fish caught by Russian boats, says Magnus Törnblom, press manager at Axfood.
Marked with a warning sign
However, individual grocers have chosen to go further than that.
Since the end of June this year, Mats Calla, trader at Ica Supermarket Teg in Umeå, has adorned the store’s shelves with warning signs, which clearly signal that the owner company Unilever has operations in Russia. After a text in capitals that the holding company thereby “helps to strengthen Putin’s war chest in the brutal attack on the people of Ukraine and the democracy we live in”, the customer is given an overview of Unilever’s brands and asked to “make your own choices”.
The consequence is that customers largely opt out of these goods. Of the assortment that can be linked to Unilever, the store has lost 31 percent of sales since the signage, Mats Calla tells TT.
– Customers choose something else instead. But it is clear that we have lost out on this.
He firmly dismisses the idea of the store’s loss due to the boycott.
– The war overshadows it. This is the least I can do to make an impact on customers. For me, it is very important that we end the war in Ukraine, then we have to make sure that Russia cannot afford to wage war, he says.
However, the store does not have any warning signs that apply to Procter&Gambler’s products, such as Pampers and Always, even though this company also has operations in Russia.
– You cannot carry the entire world’s conscience on your shoulders. But you hope that people will start to think for themselves, says Mats Calla.