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Deflation has hit an all-time high in January as the supermarkets crank up the intensity of the price war.

According to the Grocer Price Index, collated by BrandView from more than 60,000 SKUs across the big four, prices fell by the largest year-on-year proportion on record.

And it comes as Morrisons reignited the brutal price war on Monday with reductions on more than 1,000 grocery lines. The supermarket was the prime mover in this month’s GPI figures.

The GPI recorded deflation at -2.84% year on year in the month to 1 February – higher than the previous deflationary record of -2.53% for the month to 1 May 2015.

Every category saw annual deflation, with alcohol (-3.3%) and bakery (-3.6%) joining household (-4%) and dairy (-3.8%) as the biggest fallers.

Read the full story at thegrocer.co.uk here.

Morning update

Waitrose continued to struggle to make gains since the turn of the year, with weekly sales falling 2.4% to £117.8m. Independent retail analyst estimates that represents a nasty 5% like-for-like decline. Over the past 26 weeks, he said Waitrose sales were cumulatively 1.3% up in gross terms, which was about 1% down LfL. Commercial director Mark Williamson said 22% more haggis were bought in the week ended 30 January in celebration of Burns Night. Dry January also saw a hike in popularity of the no-alcohol and low-alcohol wines. Sales for the range were 47% higher for the week. John Lewis Partnership announced that it would now update on its weekly trading on a Tuesday rather than a Friday. ”Our weekly reports are changing to reflect the omnichannel nature of our business and will report on overall sales rather than individual shops, regions and sales channels,” the retailer said.

Elsewhere, The Grocer also features an exclusive report on milk processor Paynes Daires moving back into the black and two lossmaking years in 2014 and 2013. The Yorkshire business edged back into profitability after ­renegotiating the price it pays farmers to shore up its ailing margins. Revenues fell more than 15% in the 2014/15 financial year as Paynes took the conscious decision to cut volumes. Read the full story here.

Online takeaway business Just Eat has agreed the acquisition of four businesses from Rocket Internet and foodpanda for €125m (£94.7m). The businesses acquired are online takeaway food businesses trading in Spain (La Nevera Roja), Italy (PizzaBo/hellofood Italy), Brazil (hellofood Brazil) and Mexico (hellofood Mexico).

Yesterday in the City

The FTSE 100 bounced back yesterday following falls early this week with a 1.1% rise to 5,898.8 points as mining and oil shares were boosted by a bump in commodity prices.

The trend in grocery/fmcg, however, was mainly downward, with Coca-Cola HBC (CCH) leading the way. The Hellenic coke bottler was also one of the biggest fallers on the London Stock Exchanges blue-chip index – behind only AstraZeneca. Its share price plunged 5.6% to 1,322p after Barclays issued a research note in which it cut the target price from 1,400p to 1,325p.

Imperial Tobacco (IMT) and Unilever (ULVR) were also in top five FTSE 100 fallers, slipping 3.2% to 3,608p and 2.4% to 2,946.5p.

Others affected yesterday included Tate & Lyle (TATE), Fever-Tree (FEVR) and AG Barr (BAG), all falling more than 2% to 596p 674.5p and 523.5p.

It was a better day for Ocado (OCDO), Real Good Food (RGD) and Poundland (PLND). The online grocer made 4.3% of gains to 245p, but is still down more than 6% following its preliminary results on Tuesday.

RGD clawed back another 3.6% to 43p, but was still trailing almost 8% after the stock plunged heavily on Monday on a profits warning.

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