New figures from the British Retail Consortium [BRC] suggest that food inflation has increased by 12.4 per cent in the year to November.
This comes after BRC’s figures for the year to October 2022 had recorded an 11.6 per cent rise in food prices.
Meanwhile, figures from the Office for National Statistics read more severely, with their numbers logging food price inflation in the year to October 2022 at 16.2 per cent, compared to 14.5 per cent in September.
Food inflation, the BRC said, was mostly being driven by increased prices for meat products, eggs, dairy and coffee.
The underlying causes of this are said to be higher costs for energy, animal feed products and fuel for transport, driven by the war in Ukraine and the after-effects of the pandemic.
BRC chief Helen Dickinson said that an “increasingly bleak” winter was ahead as prices continued to skyrocket.
She said: “Winter looks increasingly bleak as pressures on prices continue unabated. Food prices have continued to soar, especially for meat, eggs and dairy, which have been hit by rocketing energy costs, and rising costs of animal feed and transport.
“Coffee prices also shot up on last month as high input costs filtered through to price tags.”
More broadly, the BRC’s index showed that overall shop price annual inflation was up in November by 7.4 per cent, having stood at 6.6 per cent a month prior. This constituted the fastest rate since the index was launched 17 years ago.
Fresh food prices were also up by 14.3 per cent in the year to November, compared to 13.3 per cent in October.
Dickinson added that with the cost of Christmas shopping higher than in previous years, it was likely that households would “cut back on seasonal spending in order to prioritise the essentials”.
Mike Watkins from NielsenIQ - which conducted the research for the BRG - also agreed that households would be managing their Christmas spend “more closely than at any time since the start of cost-of-living crisis.”
Photo by Viki Mohamad on Unsplash
