As the cost of living crisis shows little sign of easing, investigations reporter JOEL ADAMS returns with our Your Money Matters monthly food price tracker
The price of chicken has jumped as much as 20 per cent in just two months, with poultry farmers warning they can’t rule out further increases.
In one of Norwich’s largest supermarkets, Morrisons on Riverside, a kilogram of fresh chicken breast has increased from £5.45 in mid-April to £6.49 today, an increase of 19.1pc.
By comparison the Bank of England estimates UK prices took 10 years to increase 20pc, between 2011 and 2021.
Dozens of other supermarket items we checked are also dearer, some for the second month in a row, with a litre of petrol up more than 11pc, milk up 5pc and pasta up 6pc or more since May.
Baked beans, frozen chips, and bacon have also gone up significantly in some stores.
The findings come in our monthly price check in Norwich branches of each of the UK’s six largest supermarket chains: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl.
Norfolk poultry farmers were unsurprised to hear the price of chicken, which went up in five of the six supermarkets, saying it was caused by the high cost of grain and fuel.
Jeremy Buxton of Eves Hill Farm, near Reepham, explained: “All of the processes to get the chicken onto that shelf - at every intermediary stage prices will have gone up.
“The chicks are hatched in the hatchery, which uses a lot of heat, and they will have seen energy prices go up.
“Then onto the chicken rearers, which use energy for heating, feed conveyors - in summer even air conditioning.
“Then there’s the feed. It’s wheat, grains, barley, soy. Plus minerals and vitamins, to provide a complete nutrition ration. And each component will have gone up in price.
“I’ve got fertiliser in the barn from three years ago I bought at £250 per tonne. Now fertiliser is trading at close to a thousand pounds a tonne. And that’s just one input into a wheat crop."
He said feed wheat is currently trading at £310 a tonne on the commodities market but last year was around £150.
“It’s certainly not going to get any better for a while, and it’s not just chicken it’s beef and pork too,” he added. “I would expect prices to continue to go up.”
Ukraine and Russia are both significant exporters of energy and Ukraine is a major wheat exporter. The ongoing war is driving global prices up as supply is squeezed.
Mark Gorton, a director of Traditional Norfolk Poultry, said: “The cost of feed, cost of fuel, cost of labour - everything has gone through the roof.
“Some of the commodities have doubled in price. Wheat, soya, bedding, they’ve all vastly increased in price, and that has to be passed on.
“We’re seeing commodity prices levelling off, but whether the full cost of these massive rises has come through to the customer yet I don’t know.
“So 20pc doesn’t surprise me at all, and I’d probably say that’s not enough - it probably needs to be more.”
While shoppers brace for further increases, our monthly shopping trip revealed once again that Aldi and Lidl prices are lowest across the board - albeit without the range of branded products stocked by the Big Four - with Sainsbury’s and Tesco both marketing “Aldi price matching” on many items.
Other findings include some so-called “shrinkflation” at Sainsbury’s, which raised the price of a pack of gala apples but reduced the quantity from six to four.
And the third month of data shows some tracked items bounce up and down in price - Tropicana orange juice and Dolmio pasta sauce are particularly volatile to temporary price cuts - while the wine, beer, toiletries and biscuits we are tracking do not yet seem to have been affected by inflationary pressures.
Tesco said it was “absolutely committed to helping customers” and had increased its number of value lines. Sainsbury’s said it was investing over half a billion pounds to ensure items people buy most often are on the shelves at the best prices.
Lidl said it focuses on providing customers with the best quality products at the lowest possible price every day.
Morrisons, Aldi and Asda declined to comment.
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