The rising cost of food and fossil fuels means the cost of living is increasing at nearly its fastest rate in 40 years. But the latest monthly supermarket shop in Wales has seen staples decrease at four of the major supermarkets.
While UK-wide figures for September are not yet available, in August prices were 9.9% higher than they were 12 months ago. Figures then showed that the cost of food in the UK had increased 13.10% over the same month in 2021. It was the highest reading since at least 1989, with prices of milk, cheese and eggs among the biggest upward contributors.
Office of National Statistics figures showed that the cost of low fat milk rose by 40.4% between August 21 and August 22, butter by 29.5%, and flour by 28%.
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For the past seven months, WalesOnline has been tracking the price of seven staple items at seven of the biggest supermarkets - Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Aldi, Lidl and Marks and Spencer. In that time, most bils have increased, but at four of the supermarkets in Wales prices actually went down between the middle of August and the middle of September.
The items bought each month are:
- two pints of semi-skimmed milk
- a box of 6 free range eggs
- 350g pack of mature cheddar cheese
- 500g of spaghetti
- one load of thick-cut white sliced bread
- six Braeburn appeals
- a 12-pack of breakfast wheat cereal.
Our shopping found that the cost of the seven items bought in September went down at Tesco, Asda, Marks and Spencer and Morrisons. They went up by 10p at Aldi, by 57p at Lidl and by £1 at Sainsbury's.
The shopping baskets from the different stores found a difference of £2.57 between the most expensive and cheapest shops. The Tesco shop also dropped by £1.91 from £11.14 to £9.23 because of a Clubcard offer on the cheese and an Aldi price match on the pack of Braeburn apples.
Tesco went from sixth most expensive in August, to cheapest in September showing what a difference looking out for deals and roll backs can save you. A pack of 350g mature cheddar was £4.20 at Sainsbury's, compared to £2.39 at Aldi and £3 at Tesco if you have a Clubcard.
Every month, consumer organisation Which? checks the prices on a whole basket of food and the latest figures show that Aldi was the cheapest overall for August with our shop costing £76.24 on average, beating rival discounter Lidl by £1.66. They compared 49 popular groceries, including own-label and a small number of branded items.
The same shop at Waitrose was £102.20 on average, meaning it was £25.96 more than Aldi.
Latest figures from industry supermarket expert Kantar shows that Aldi is taking sales from Lidl. Data shows that some £8.1m of spend switched from Lidl to Aldi in the 12 weeks to 4 September. It’s the highest level of switching from Lidl to Aldi since 2018.
It’s thought Lidl may have suffered from poor availability levels, with its Twitter team fending off regular complaints from shoppers in recent months about empty shelves in numerous stores across the country.
The Grocer has reported that Aldi’s sales rose by 18.7% over the 12 weeks, taking its share to 9.3%, up from 8.1% a year ago. Meanwhile Morrisons saw sales drop 4.1%, taking its share to 9.1%, down from 9.8% last year.
Lidl grew sales by 20.9% to reach 7.1% market share.
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