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Norwegian supermarkets to roll prices back following hike 

Frazer Norwell
Frazer Norwell - [email protected]
Norwegian supermarkets to roll prices back following hike 
Coop Extra and Rema 1000 have decided to roll back prices following a rise. Pictured is a bag of groceries in Norway.

Two of Norway's biggest supermarket chains have announced that they will reverse price rises introduced on commonly bought items at the beginning of February. 

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Many shoppers in Norway were left fretting at the turn of the month due to warnings and gloomy forecasts of price hikes come February 1st. 

Supermarkets themselves warned that certain products could see rises of ten percent. The reason for the rises being announced is that on February 1st, supermarkets adjust their prices wholesale. They do so once more in July. 

Several news outlets such as VG/E24, public broadcaster NRK and ABC Nyheter ran comparisons on the most commonly bought products by Norwegian households. 

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Their comparisons found that two of Norway's three cheapest chains, Rema and Coop Extra, had raised prices between 4.8 and 10 percent between the end of January and February 1st. 

However, Kiwi, the other chain in Norway which regularly competes for the title of the cheapest in the country, froze prices on several everyday products. In the comparison tests, the shopping bill from Kiwi stayed the same while their competitors rose. 

Rema and Coop Extra have both since announced that prices would be rolled back following the original increase on February 1st. 

"Despite significantly increased raw material and purchasing costs, we now choose to lower the prices back to the level before February 1st," Tom Kristiansen, managing director of Rema 1000, announced in a press release.

Similarly, Coop Extra will roll back the price on some 4,000 items to what they cost customers before February 1st.  

"We have adjusted the prices back down to what they were before February 1st so that we are competitive. Customers can be confident that it is just as cheap, and perhaps cheaper, to shop at Coop Extra as with our competitors," director of communications in Coop Norge, Bjørn Takle Friis, told the Norwegian newspaper VG

"We don't do it because we can afford it, but because we have to. We have to be competitive in order not to lose customers - and we certainly can't afford that," he added. 

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