Grocery price inflation slows to lowest level since October 2021
Grocery price inflation has slowed to its lowest level since October 2021 – but consumers are showing no sign of ending their cost-of-living crisis behaviour, figures suggest.
Supermarket prices are 2.4% higher than a year ago, slowing for the 15th month in a row from April’s 3.2%, according to analysts Kantar.
Grocery inflation is now just 0.8 percentage points above the 10-year average of 1.6% between 2012 and 2021, just before prices began to climb.
However, cheaper supermarket own-label lines are proving resilient, and are still growing faster than brands, making up more than half (52%) of total spending, Kantar said.
Sales of premium own label ranges continue to increase too, up by 9.9% compared with a year ago.
‘Normal levels’
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said: “Grocery price inflation is gradually returning to what we would consider more normal levels.
“Typically, an inflation rate of around 3% is when we start to see marked changes in consumers’ behaviour, with shoppers trading down to cheaper items when the rate goes above this line and vice versa when the rate drops.
“However, after nearly two-and-a-half years of rapidly rising prices, it could take a bit longer for shoppers to unwind the habits they have learnt to help them manage the cost of living crisis.”
Figures show shoppers made the most of the early May bank holiday weekend to dust off the barbecue, with sales burger sales climbing by 13% and beer and wine sales up by 9% and 21% respectively compared with the week before.
Ocado
Ocado was again the fastest growing grocer over the 12 weeks to May 12, with sales up by 12.4% – well ahead of the total online market’s 5.4% uplift.
Lidl reached a new record-high market share of 8.1%, fuelled in part by its bakery counters, as well as its loyalty scheme.
Britain’s biggest grocer Tesco now takes 27.6% of the market, its 5.6% growth in sales matched by Sainsbury’s, which now claims 15.1%.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
It makes me wonder if the recent high price increases was just profiteering on the back of a very dire situation. How low can one get! One supermarket reported a profit of over £2.4 billion, up from £800m from the previous period. Wow!!!! The curious thing is that no one is investigating this or even mentioning it!
On the same site a story is run saying food banks are running out of resources. My supermarket shop still far higher than it was a few years ago, but the money to keep up with it has not kept up, so it is still way more expensive. And we have the added harm of brexit to deal with.
So not the story the government would like to think it is.
The recent world issues, in particular the Ukrainian war are no longer the top news topics they once were – so companies can no longer profiteer from them. Keeping inflation high as a result. Unless food inflation becomes food deflation (food companies will never let that happen!)- we’ll continue to to pay far more for our food than we should. Rip off Britain at its best. It’s what we get for allowing Thatcher to give business the upper hand at our expense.