The baker is pleased: 'Now I'll just be a normal industrialist' - Haaretz

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Tue., November 13, 2007 Kislev 3, 5768

Israel Time: 03:33 (EST+7)

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The baker is pleased: 'Now I'll just be a normal industrialist'

By Yuval Azoulay

tags: Israel, Gaza, West Bank, IDF

For nearly 30 years Yohanan Aharonson has been baking bread. Every year, his 700 employees produce about 35 million loaves of basic bread. Yesterday he was a happy man. Now that the cabinet has agreed to lift price controls on bread, he will be able to feel "like a normal industrialist," Aharonson said.

Aharonson is head of the Bakers Association and owner of three large bakeries: Kiryat Shmona Area Bakery, Deganit Ein Bar Food & Baking Industries and Herman, a boutique bakery in Rishon Letzion.

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"The cabinet decision to remove the price supervision on bread is very good for us," Aharonson said yesterday. "Now I can reach stability in terms of my revenues. After all, there is competition with other bakeries in any event, so our situation can only get better."

Aharonson said that for years he has been forced to sell dark bread at a loss, with the government controlling the price on one hand and manufacturing cost rising constantly on the other. "The price of wheat doubled over the past year," Aharonson said. "For years the bakeries were the victims of the government. Now we can start talking about revenues," he said.

He is not worried about the consequences of a spike in bread prices. No one will replace bread with cake, he said. "After all those years, no one can scare me with predictions of losses. We will go from plus to minus now, actually. We'll make less product and more money. The person who is accustomed to eating dark bread will continue to do so in any event," Aharonson said.

According to Aharonson, in the past year the cost of making one kilogram of dark bread rose to NIS 7.5. "The cost of one loaf of dark bread, with an average weight of 750 grams, is about five and a half shekels, and we always have to make extra, so returns were unavoidable. Now the prices will depend on the supermarket chains. I expect them to rise in some cases to NIS 8 per loaf."

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