Supermarkets are making as much as a third of their profits from suppliers by demanding the type of charges that have led to the accounting scandal at Tesco, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The sums include penalty charges for late or incomplete shipments, bonuses for hitting sales targets, refunds for promotional discounts and one-off payments for a multitude of reasons such as launching new products.
The fees are lumped in on top of simple retail profits and they can grow to huge sums when large supermarkets are able to negotiate more lucrative deals with their suppliers.
