High cost of flour, sugar, margarine pushing price of bread upwards – Baker

The founder and Executive Producer of Bread Boutique, a famous bread-producing company in Ghana, William Hwanompe, says the price of bread has increased in the country due to the high cost of ingredients used in making the product.

Bread makers and retailers in Ghana have increased the prices of their products in recent times to help them stay in business.

A loaf of bread sold in parts of the country at GH¢8 in 2021 is currently being sold at GH¢10, while those sold at GH¢10 are now going for GH¢15.

Some bakers in the Ashanti Region have had to shut down their businesses due to the high cost of producing the products.

Shedding more light on the reasons for the increased cost of bread in Ghana, Mr Hwanompe, in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show, told Bernard Avle that, although prices of the ingredients they use had gone up, the cost of three major commodities — flour, sugar and margarine — have skyrocketed.

He said bread producers thus have no choice but to keep passing the increasing cost of production onto consumers.

“For us as producers, things are becoming very difficult for us, especially those of us who have a model that is very alien to the system and having a niche market. They [government] should do something to help those who produce flour and those who are importing margarine and sugar. If those things are sorted out, we can manage. Yeast is expensive, but we can manage it because we don’t use that much. If they can sort out flour, margarine and sugar, we can be smiling to the bank.”

“We all don’t enjoy increasing the prices of our products… If the government does not intervene for the flour producers, sugar, and margarine importers…we have no choice but to increase prices to help us make ends meet as well,” he added.

Speaking on using local alternatives for the ingredients being used for the production, like maize flour, cassava flour, amongst others, to help reduce the production cost as well as the price of bread, he agreed that that could be an alternative, but said the consumers will reject it, and it would be a major set back for producers.

“You are very right, but consumers, being used to a foreign taste, would not help us. We started using soya, but it was rejected by the consumers, making the bread rot on the shelves. To keep us on the market, we have to produce what they [consumers] want. It is scary when we consider the fact that someday we may not get the ingredients we use.”

About Bread Boutique

Bread Boutique was founded in the year 2013 with just one branch at Dansoman. Now, there are 10 branches, 8 in Accra, one in Takoradi, and one in Kumasi.

Bread Boutique is not the regular bakery that does the everyday bread; they are careful about what they produce. They offer a unique collection of made-from-scratch hand-formed artisan bread.