Top story
Shop prices have fallen for the first time in almost three years as non-food retailers tempted shoppers with deep discounts in a bid to shift summer stock.
The BRC-NielsenNIQ shop price index recorded deflation of 0.3% in August, swinging for inflation of 0.2% in the previous month.
Non-food prices remained in deflation this month at -1.5%, falling further from the -0.9% in July.
Meanwhile, food inflation continued to slow to 2%, down from 2.3%, to stand at the lowest rate since November 2021.
Fresh food prices slowed further in August to 1%, compared with 1.4% in July, while ambient food inflation also decelerated from 3.6% to 3.4%.
BRC chief exceutive Helen Dickinson said the overal fall in shop prices was mainly driven by retailers selling fashion and household goods.
“This discounting followed a difficult summer of trading caused by poor weather and the continued cost-of-living crunch impacting many families,” she added.
“Food inflation eased with fresh food prices, especially fruit, meat and fish, seeing the biggest monthly decrease since December 2020 as supplier input costs lessened.”
“Retailers will continue to work hard to keep prices down, and households will be happy to see that prices of some goods have fallen into deflation.”
However, Dickinson warned there could be renewed inflationary pressures on the horizon as the outlook for commodity prices remained uncertain due to the impact of climate change on harvests domestically and globally, as well as rising geopolitical tensions.
Mike Watkins, head of retailer and business insight at NielsenIQ, said: “Shop price inflation has fallen again in August as many non-food retailers have kept promotional support due to the unpredictable weather and food retailers have introduced more price cuts to help drive incremental sales during the ‘summer of sport’.”
Morning update
Ocado and Australian supermarket Coles announced this morning that both of their customer fulfilment centres (CFCs) in Australia commenced operations in July.
Coles is serving shoppers Metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney from the CFCs, powered by the Ocado Smart Platform.
Next day home delivery orders from stores in the areas are expected to be transitioned to the CFCs by the end of December.
Ocado CEO Tim Steiner said: “The start of operations in our two Australian CFCs is an exciting moment for teams at Ocado.
“Australia is one of the fastest developing markets in the world for grocery ecommerce, and Coles is already a market leader in the online channel.”
Ocado now operates 25 live CFCs in markets around the world.
“As these CFCs ramp up, we are excited to help Coles bring a step-change in customer experience online to households across Sydney and Melbourne.”
The FTSE 100 is up 0.5% this morning to 8,371.35pts.
Ocado jumped 1.4% to 364.9p following its latest news.
Other risers so far include C&C Group, up 2.2% to 159.6p, and Diageo, up 1.1% to 2,559p.
Early fallers include Associated British Foods, down 2.8% to 2,444.5p, and McBride, down 2.1% to 129.2p.
This week in the City
It is set to remain quiet after the bank holiday, with little in the way of UK fmcg updates
The main news of the week comes on Wednesday when Naked Wines will publish full-year results, giving an insight into its ongoing turnaround.
Over in the US, Campbell Soup and JM Smucker are due to report quarterly numbers on Wednesday afternoon.
And, in Europe, on Thursday, Pernod Ricard and Delivery Hero both put out quarterly results, with Jack Daniels owner Brown-Forman to follow in the US later in the day.
No comments yet