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Granini Trinkgenuss Orange is cheat pack of the year

It's an award that Eckes-Granini shouldn't really be happy about. Out of five candidates, consumers have voted the orange flavour drink the cheat pack of the year.

Consumers voted for the drink by a large majority. Granini Drinking Pleasure Orange voted »Cheat pack of the year 2024«. Almost half of the more than 32,000 votes cast went to the product from Eckes-Granini Deutschland GmbH.

Once again this year, the Hamburg Consumer Advice Centre called for the cheat pack of the year.

The consumer advocates say that the manufacturer changed the recipe of the popular juice in spring 2024. The amount of orange juice per bottle was halved and replaced with sugar water. Despite this, the retailer has maintained the sales price. In relation to the fruit juice content, this would correspond to a doubling of the price.

Orange juice stretched and clue hidden

Consumers have now given Eckes-Granini a lesson. This is because, according to the consumer advocates, the supplier is alleged to have diluted its 100 per cent orange juice and even tried to cover it up.

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The label on the bottle of the Granini Drinking Pleasure Orange is virtually unchanged and there is no indication of the new composition of the ingredients. Only the prominent claim „100 % fruit juice“ is missing on the banderole, but is incomprehensibly not replaced by the statement „50 % fruit juice“.

In a random sample in around 20 Hamburg supermarkets, the drink was currently not available. Eckes-Granini may have cancelled deliveries because the company and the retailers were unable to agree on the price. Crop failures due to climate change and a plant disease affecting orange trees have recently led to massive price increases for orange juice concentrate, putting juice producers under pressure.

These were the other candidates for the 2024 cheat pack election

Lebensbaum tomato seasoning salt from Ulrich Walter

Instead of 150, there are only 80 grams of seasoning salt in the tin, but it costs one euro more. This makes the product 150 per cent more expensive. To make matters worse, the packaging is too large and pretends to contain more, according to the consumer protection organisation

Cremissimo Bourbon Vanilla from Unilever

The filling quantity of Cremissimo ice cream in the Bourbon Vanilla flavour will shrink from 1,300 to 900 millilitres. At the same retail price, the hidden price increase is up to 44 per cent. 

Biscotto wafer flakes from Aldi Nord

The filling quantity of wafer wafers has shrunk from 200 to 100 grams. At the same retail price of €1.99, the wafer biscuits are suddenly 100 per cent more expensive despite the recipe remaining unchanged.

Dove shower cream from Unilever

A seemingly superior product turns out to be „old wine in new bottles“. Nevertheless, the new shower cream costs almost twice as much as the old shower cream. The filling quantity decreases and the price increases. However, the ingredients remain almost identical. 

Fewer cheat packs, but higher mark-ups

With 67 cheat packs, fewer products were affected by hidden price increases in 2024 than in 2023 (104). However, the average price increase was significantly higher. It was 31.5 per cent for the products recorded by the consumer advice centre in Hamburg, compared to an average of just 23.5 per cent in 2023, according to the consumer protection agency's statistics. „The five highest price increases were in the region of 100 per cent and more. We only registered such a drastic price increase once in 2023,“ reports Armin Valet from the consumer advice centre in Hamburg. Some of the products with particularly high price increases in the past year have now been nominated as candidates for the »Cheat Pack of the Year 2024«.

Source and photos: Consumer advice centre Hamburg

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