Charedi supermarket chain Osher Ad won a tender from the Finance Ministry to sell the majority of 550 tons of olive oil to consumers at a significantly discounted price. The Finance Ministry said that they hope the deal will bring down prices throughout the country.

The 750 ml bottles will be sold for 16.90 NIS in Osher Ad’s 17 stores. Osher Ad will be selling 80 percent of all 550 tons of the oil to its customers. However, Osher Ad doesn’t have store locations across the country, something that will cause many residents to miss out on the heavily discounted prices.

The Finance Ministry held a bid that allowed stores to win a tender wherein they would receive the olive oil without paying taxes on it, in order to allow consumers to purchase the highly used product for very low prices. The competing stores had to agree to the final sale price of the product ahead of time.

Last year, Shufersal and Ramy Levy stores won the tender and sold the bottles for 20 NIS. This year, the tender went to Osher Ad and a food sales company by the name of Mia. Mia will put their own label on the bottles that they won in the tender as will Osher Ad. However, Mia has agreed with Osher Ad that the supermarket will sell 80% of Mia’s bottles for 17.70 NIS. Thus, of the total 550 tons of the discounted olive oil, Osher Ad will carry and sell 500 of them, leaving the other 50 to Mia to sell elsewhere.

The Finance Ministry said that it knew about the partnership between Mia and Oser Ad but preferred the cheaper price being offered by the pair, rather than countrywide sales offered by stores that submitted a higher price for the tender.

Representative of the Finance Ministry who were involved in the decision making process told Ynet News that: “These two companies offered the cheapest price and therefore they won the tender. The other stores were able to offer lower prices and didn’t. Therefore they did not win.”

A representative from Osher Ad told Ynet: “The Finance Ministry saw that we were passing all of the saving on to the consumer and therefore chose us to win the Tender. That was, after all, the point of the tender in the first place.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)