The major French retail chains now have their stocks of masks well filled, so they have reduced their supply costs. This news should bring down the prices of masks. Until now, it was a major budget for households.

Lately, on a shopping list, buying masks turned out to be quite an expense.

As the newspaper Le Figaro reminds us, the bill can quickly rise to 300 euros per month (if the surgical masks are used properly, i.e. only 4 hours).

On the supermarkets’ side, their sales reached 27 million euros during the week of July 13 to 19 and 24 million between July 20 and 26, according to panellist Nielsen.

But good news.

The newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) has revealed that major retailers will lower the prices of masks. Even if a second wave of the virus is feared for the autumn.

“The masks will become a major product in the same way as Coca-Cola or Nutella, and all the brands are getting ready to make commercial offers for the new school year,” Thierry Cotillard, president of Intermarché and Netto, told the JDD.

While they currently sell a box of 50 masks for an average of 25 euros, they could soon divide prices by two.

Carrefour announced more affordable prices in September, but said it did not want to “enter a competition between retailers on this product,” says the BFMTV channel.

READ ALSO – Coronavirus: Almost 2 out of 3 French people support the wearing of masks outside

Why will the prices of the masks go down?

The emergency is no longer the same as it was at the beginning of the health crisis. Transport costs have therefore been reduced. And stocks are built up. The market is also very open, so there is no more battle to restock.

“We are no longer forced to fly boxes of Kleenex in first class,” explains a buyer from a major French company to the JDD.

READ ALSO – French universities to reopen in September, the mask will be “highly recommended”

Also in France, the Intermarché supermarket group has even set up a factory, near Ploërmel, in the Morbihan department (western France). This facility can produce 300 million masks (FFP2 and surgical masks) per year, which will be added to the company’s stocks.

In order for the French customers’ wallets to feel the benefit, the companies now have to sell off the stocks purchased at a high price to switch completely to the new products, which are much less expensive.

And at a time when masks are being made compulsory more and more frequently, one can imagine that many people are expecting such a price cut.