Price of Mama Noodles is NOT going up
Certainly, Thailand has quite a few problems: road safety, the upcoming rainy season, the rice mortgage, protests, new elections, etc., but there is a much bigger problem that could affect many Thais. The price of instant noodles is going up!
The President of the Association of Thai Wholesaling and Retailing, Mr. Somchai Pornratanacharoen has officially announced that some instant noodle manufacturers will increase their prices. Rising production costs and reduced sales force manufacturers to make a pack of instant noodles 25 to 50 Satang more expensive. Ho, wait a minute, sales are declining and so (!) the price is going up? I always thought that if you sell less you lower the price, but yes that is probably typical Farang logic.
Prompt is the top boss of Thai President Foods PCL, the manufacturer of the famous Mama instant noodles, Mr. Pipat Paniengvet has responded to this ominous news item. He has stated that Mama instant noodles will NOT be increased in price and thus the price of 6 Baht per pack will be maintained (for now). As if this were not enough certainty, the Deputy Director of the Department of Internal Trade, General Santi Sarathawanpat, has confirmed that his department has not received any request to increase the price.
mr. Pipat reiterates the company's philosophy of doing as much as possible for the “little man” who is already facing an increase in the cost of living. Quite noble, of course, but the Mama instant noodles are not only intended for the poorest of the Thai population.
Instant noodles, with Mama as the market leader, meet a huge need. Just go and look in a large supermarket and you will see meters long shelves with a variety of brands of this "quickly ready" meal. The 7-Elevens and Family Marts also sell a lot of this stuff, a packet of pasta, some hot water and some spices and voilà, a (intermediate) meal is ready!
Yes, it is also eaten at my house, my wife eats it while watching a Thai soap opera, my son eats it under some fighting game on the computer. There are always about 10 packs up for grabs here in the house and it makes sense that a price increase will cut our spending pattern considerably
A comment on an English forum says that the nutritional value of such a meal is negligible. He says that the packaging has as much nutritional value as the contents, but that is not true. On the website of Mama instant noodles (www.mama.co.th/en/faqs.php ) contains a lot of information about the product, from which it can be deduced, among other things, that a portion of noodles of 60 grams provides approx. 250 kCal.
Well, for now there is some peace on this front, but we have to keep an eye on it because a drastic price increase could heat up the Thai population considerably. And that is the last thing people want here!
About this blogger
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Bert Gringhuis (1945), born and raised in Almelo in the beautiful Twente. Later lived for many years in Amsterdam and Alkmaar, working in export for various companies. I first came to Thailand in 1980 and immediately fell in love with the country. Been back many times since then and moved to Thailand after my (early) retirement as a widower. I have been living there for 22 years now with my somewhat younger Thai lady Poopae.
My first experiences in Thailand as a kind of newsletter sent to family, friends and acquaintances, which later appeared under the name Gringo on Thailandblog. Many, many articles followed those first stories and that has grown into an almost daily hobby.
In the Netherlands still an avid footballer and football referee, but the years are starting to tell and in Thailand still avid, but the pool billiards is really of inferior quality, ha ha!
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Wasn't it true that on April 28-29, Somchai Pornratanacharoen, chairman of the Thai wholesale and retail association, announced that prices were going up and called on the government to do something about it, but that Mama announced the day before that the price of their noodles didn't go up. Remarkable news, of course, if there were no reports yet that prices would rise.
The price increase with lower sales (and higher costs?) is somewhat dubious. With a lower demand, because people find the current prices too expensive to purchase the same amount, you would think that the price could also fall due to greater supply and lower demand. So there is overcapacity. You could only keep or increase the price if the people who still buy your products would be willing to pay more for it (hardcore noodle fans?), but noodles cannot really be called exclusive, so I don't think that will fly... Current customers will also purchase less if the price were to rise further. With lower demand for noodles, only the price can drop: you also buy fewer ingredients, only your fixed costs remain the same. But I assume that the really fixed costs are not too bad, and other semi-fixed costs such as personnel costs will also be not too bad: they just hire fewer people or fire some people (unfortunately they don't have a leg to stand on).
Unless the cost of the ingredients has risen enormously, in a bad market you could lose some of your own profit margin because (even more) buyers drop out if you pass on the costs to the customer… But that will stop once , in the end you have to pass on the increased raw material costs in your product. If they have risen enormously - crop failure, lots of high demand from other industries, etc. - then you have no choice to raise the price, even if more customers will walk away.
The latter is probably the case because I have no other reasonable explanation. A producer or shopkeeper who has finished his school will of course raise his prices purely and simply because less is sold… although you sometimes hear that some Thai catering establishments etc. do this.. 555. If this is really a hot issue then the Bangkok Post certainly has a piece with some figures about the sales figures (demand/supply) and the raw material prices to explain the price movements.
It stinks, or should I say, it smells unpleasant. Those mama noodles are ruining the air in my house.
I offer my family fruit, vegetables, rice, spuds if they want them, bread. As an extra I have croquette, frikandel, herring, spreads, jam and peanut butter, cheese and sliced meat, but no, they eat those rotten noodles. Those are sacred. I'll translate what's on that package tomorrow and I wouldn't be surprised if it contains a lot of salt, msg of course, I already saw 'no' cholesterol, and other substances that I don't know yet.
So more tomorrow. No, I don't need that stuff.