(Reuters) – Nestle will have to raise prices of its food products further this year to offset higher production costs that it has yet to fully pass on to consumers, Chief Executive Mark Schneider told a German newspaper.

The increases will not be as steep as they were in 2022, but “we have some catching up to do over the full year,” Schneider was quoted as telling Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview due for publication on Sunday.

In the first nine months of 2022, the world’s biggest food group, which makes KitKat chocolate bars and Nescafe reported organic sales growth of 8.5%, of which price rises accounted for 7.5 percentage points.

Inflation in many developed economies has been running at multi-decade highs, driven in large part by increases in prices of food and energy.

(Reporting by John Stonestreet; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)