The drop in sales of bread has fallen by about five to eight per cent since the increase in the price of Maltese loaves earlier this year. And, as the day when the market is liberalised draws nearer, bakers are worried that some of them will not survive the impact.

The number of bakers has already dropped from 170 to 140 in the past eight years. Most of them were small bakeries. With the younger generations not wanting to take up the harsh job – with its irregular hours and low wages – and with the bigger bakeries taking over much of the business, the opening up of the market on 1 January will most likely lead to more victims.

The problem is rather complex and it is not easy to sort it out.

The rise in the price of flour has inevitably led to higher production costs for bakers. While the price of Maltese loaves is (so far) regulated, that for other forms of bread is not. Therefore, while still producing the traditional Maltese loaf because, after all, it is the type of bread that is most commonly sought, over the past years bakers have started to diversify and produce other types to make up for the losses incurred in producing the traditional loaf.

Bakers’ Cooperative president Karmenu Micallef has told The Malta Independent that sales of traditional bread have declined since the e0.07 and e0.04 increase for large and small loaves respectively last May. What will happen when the market is liberalised on 1 January and the price of traditional loaves will, most probably, go up even more? Have people already shifted from consuming the traditional loaf to other forms of bread because they think the former is of less value for money? If this is so, are we running the risk of “losing” the traditional loaf when this becomes even more expensive after 1 January?

Added to all this, apart from the increase in the price of flour, bakers have come face to face with other increased expenses – that of water and electricity – and will likely face other added costs when the rent reform comes into place.

The other side of the coin is how all this is affecting the consumer. Bread makes up a good part of the Maltese diet. Many families have one good meal a day and eat bread either for lunch or for dinner. Some do it because they cannot afford more than one good meal a day; others do it because they do not have the time to prepare two good meals. Most children eat bread during their school breaks too.

Have the sales of bread declined because people are today more careful in the amounts they buy? It could also be that today, with most families owning freezers, any unused bread is put there and is not thrown away, as used to happen in the past. The freshness is not the same once the bread is taken out of the freezer, but many have adapted to the different taste.

The importation of bread from abroad as well as negative comments about the nutritional content of bread has not helped local bakeries either.

All these factors paint a rather dull picture for local bakeries. As in anything else, however, those who are the more enterprising and, most of all, those who continue to produce good quality bread will find it less hard to be able to compete, even if the circumstances do not look so rosy.