The Italian Antitrust Authority said Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into the role played by large-scale retail chains in hikes in food prices in Italy in recent years.
It said it was launching the probe "in view of the widening gap between overall inflation and food price inflation recorded in recent years".
It said that data from national statistics agency ISTAT showed food prices rose by 24.9% between October 2021 and October 2025, almost eight percentage points higher than the increase in the general consumer price index, 17.3%, over the same period.
"Against this backdrop of rising consumer prices, agricultural producers frequently report squeezed margins, or at least insufficient margin growth, which may be partly due to the strong imbalance in bargaining power between farmers and major large-scale retail chains," the authority said.
"The investigation seeks, among other things, to analyse how large-scale retail chains exercise their purchasing power, including through non-corporate aggregation arrangements (cooperatives, buying groups and super-buying groups); the fees charged to suppliers for sales-related services (including product listing, shelf placement, promotions, new product launches and trade spending); and the increasing importance of distributor-branded products (private labels)".
