People in Finland may soon feel the pinch at the grocery checkout. The government is proposing legislation that would limit the sale and production of supermarket own-brand products. These are popular budget-friendly alternatives like Pirkka, Xtra and Coop.
While the aim is to strengthen the bargaining power of independent food producers, critics warn it could drive up prices for households already feeling the squeeze.
Private label products offer consumers reliable, lower-cost options. Reducing their presence, the government argues, would give smaller producers more room to negotiate fair prices and improve market competition. Consumer advocates, however, caution that the timing could worsen Finland's cost-of-living pressures.
"About one in four Finns are in economic distress," said Juha Beurling-Pomoell, who heads the Finnish Consumers' Union.
He pointed out that over the past six years, food prices have risen around 25 percent.
"If the government wants us to pay more for food, what is enough? Nobody would have believed six or seven years ago that food prices would go up 20-25 percent. They would have said 'you're out of your mind', but now that's the situation," Beurling-Pomoell added.
The move is also politically sensitive, coming just a year before the next general election. History shows that spikes in essential prices can have immediate political consequences.
The All Points North podcast stepped inside Finland's only corn tortilla factory to explore how products win shelf space — and unpack the bigger political and economic stakes behind the humble store brand.
Oligopoly and struggling farmers
Finland's grocery market is highly concentrated, dominated by the S Group and Kesko, which together control roughly 80 percent of retail sales.
With only a few major buyers, raising concerns can feel risky. This legislation is an attempt to address that, but it's not a simple win for agricultural producers.
Kimmo Tammi, a legal adviser for the farmers' lobby MTK, noted that the concentration leaves smaller suppliers vulnerable to unfair practices and reluctant to report abuses for fear of losing market share.
"Finnish farmers are struggling," Tammi said. "If there are only two to three buyers, it's really difficult to bring up unfair practices."
Consumer market expert Mika Yrjölä of Tampere University meanwhile said that private labels, once considered low-quality budget options, are now trusted by Finnish shoppers for value.
"The private label phenomenon has had a great success in Finland, and this is kind of the pushback you get from farmers and other food suppliers in the food value chain. If you think back to 20 years ago, private label products were mainly seen as low-quality items, and now we have a huge variety of different kinds of private label products," he explained.
Restricting store brands could spark resistance, especially now, as more households have fallen on hard times, with Finland having the worst unemployment rate in the EU.
While the move to cap the share of private label products is written into the government's programme, the timing could be difficult.
"Maybe it's just poor timing and an inability to kind of read the room," Yrjölä said.
"It was a rollercoaster"
Beyond the economics, the debate touches food producers like Ivan Chavez, founder of Don Tortilla, Finland's first corn tortilla factory. Chavez has spent nearly a decade navigating the Finnish market, building relationships with major retailers to secure shelf space for his niche product.
"Getting customers in the beginning was a roller coaster," Chavez explained. "Now it's much easier, but you still have to handle everything yourself — from production to sales to bureaucracy."
As policymakers weigh the balance between producer rights and consumer costs, the impact could be felt every time shoppers push a cart through supermarket aisles.
The bill amending the Food Market Act is expected to reach parliament at the end of February, with changes potentially coming into effect by summer.
