The French supermarket chain E.Leclerc will offer fuel to customers at a purchase price. It is more than a stunt, they also want to send out a signal.
If you want to fill up cheaply in France, it is wise to look for an E.Leclerc supermarket with a gas station. You can fill up on fuel there until the end of this month that costs just as much as the supermarket buys it for. E.Leclerc therefore earns nothing from it, so this news is not really free advertising in that regard. The big question is of course: why is E.Leclerc doing this?
The French RTL understands from E.Leclerc CEO Michel-Édouard Leclerc that it is a response to a request from the French government. According to him, he asked gas station owners to lower their profit margin ‘out of goodwill towards the people’, so that fuel prices do not become too high. Leclerc says he was stimulated by this and wants to show two things by crossing the entire profit margin at his gas stations. Firstly, according to him, it shows how much of the fuel price (or rather, how little) is margin for the operator at all, secondly, he wants to show that the prices continue to rise despite that.
According to Leclerc, that shows that the key to more decent fuel prices lies with taxes and not so much with the companies that offer fuel. Of course, the oil price also plays an important role. Incidentally, the French government is considering a temporary tax reduction on fuel. Anyway, Leclerc can probably expect big crowds at the gas station near his stores until the end of the month.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl