Warburtons led a raft of price rises on bread this week as expensive flour and soaring energy prices continued to filter through to shoppers.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been punishing for Warburtons, causing both wheat and gas prices to spike. The baker spent an extra £118m on flour in the past year, while its gas bill has skyrocketed due to the need to keep its ovens firing almost every day of the year.
A loaf of Warburtons sliced white bread went up by 15p in Asda and Morrisons this week, making it now 16% more expensive than before the invasion last year.
“Putin doing what he’s doing in eastern Europe, on the back of Covid, is the major trigger. It has sent shockwaves through the food industry,” chair Jonathan Warburton told the Guardian this week.
He added: “I think people are understanding about these price rises if you’re clear and straightforward with them about what’s happening. It isn’t my fault that bloody idiot went into Ukraine, quite frankly.”
own-label bread has inevitably also been affected, with prices on a wholemeal loaf rising this week. But in good news for Warburtons, its margin to the own-label equivalent has reduced over the past year. Warburtons is now just 39p more expensive on average across the supermarkets, down from 45p a year ago.
Nescafé also pushed through price rises this week, with the price of its Gold Blend jumping by 12% across the supermarkets.
The chief drivers of this are likely Packaging, transport and energy. coffee prices fell on commodity markets through the course of 2022, down 25% between Q1 and Q4.
“We are doing everything we can to manage these costs in the short-term, but in order to maintain the highest standards of quality, it is sometimes necessary to make minor adjustments to the price of our products,” said a Nestlé spokesperson.
Heinz continues its wave of price rises across the retailers with multipacks of baked beans, tomato ketchup 910g and multipacks of tomato soup all up this week, joining single beans cans and spaghetti which rose earlier in January.
Heinz Tomato Soup multipack increased to an average of £3.85, a 4.1% increase in just a week, due to price increases in Lidl and Tesco. This most recent price increase is the most recent in a long line that has left the soup 56% more expensive that a year before.
Almost 500 Heinz listings including baked beans, tomato ketchup, and tinned spaghetti have gone up in price during the first two weeks of the year, in some cases by up to 80%.
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