FINANCIAL TIMES: … “We’re driving up food prices unnecessarily,” Ken Powell, chief executive of General Mills, said in an interview with the Financial Times. “If corn prices go up, wheat goes up. It’s all linked.”
General Mills, which makes Cheerios cereal, Progresso soup and Häagen-Dazs ice-cream, is the world’s sixth-largest food company by revenues. It said last month that it expects its input costs to increase up to 11 per cent next year as it lowered its earnings forecast on inflation fears.
Mr Powell said that the company had had to pay twice as much as last year for wheat and that costs of corn and oats are up 30 to 40 per cent. General Mills has absorbed much of these increases but has also had to pass some of them on to consumers… (more)
