Supermarket Sainsbury’s has cut the price of its own-brand butter and bread following the accusation on UK’s supermarkets of propagating ‘greedflation’ and pushing prices unnecessarily.
According to reports on Tuesday (9), the supermarket is reducing its salted and unsalted butter from £1.99 to £1.89 for 250g packets with immediate effect. It has also cut the price of its some of its own-brand bread to 75p from 85p. The supermarket said it was able to lower some of its bread and butter prices due to wholesale prices beginning to fall.
“Whenever we are paying less for the products we buy from our suppliers, we will pass those savings on to customers,” the UK’s second-largest supermarket chain said
Sainsbury’s move is closely followed by Aldi as it also reduced 250g of butter marginally from today (10).
The move by Sainsbury’s and Aldi comes after criticism of supermarkets for not passing on wholesale price falls quickly enough.
Wholesale food prices have been falling globally, but UK food inflation is at its highest for 45 years, pushing up the pace of general price rises.
Inflation was expected to fall below 10 per cent last month, but soaring food prices kept it in double digits. Food and drink inflation reached 19.1 per cent in the UK in March, according to official figures, showing the cost of groceries had soared far above the headline rate of 10.1 per cent over the past year.
This marked the fastest annual increase in food and drink prices since 1977, as the surging cost of basic essentials added to the pressure from rocketing energy bills.
Trade union Unite has accused some retailers of “fuelling inflation by excessive profiteering”.
New research from union group Unite in late March shows how profit margins for the first half of 2022 were 89 per cent higher compared to the same period in 2019.
“Despite the rise in wholesale prices, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda still managed to increase their profits by an astonishing 97 per cent in 2021,” Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham said.
“At the same time the eight top UK food manufacturers made profits of £22.9 billion. Profiteering is happening right along the food supply chain and workers are paying the price
“It’s more evidence that the British public are hostage to greedflation. It’s time our elected leaders and policy makers woke up to corporate greed and challenged it head on,” Graham said.
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