Grocery prices were relatively static over the new year holiday but the retailers have made up for it this week with a flurry of pricing activity. The Christmas special offers on booze ended this week with Hardy's Stamp Shiraz Cabernet rocketing up £2 at Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco. Asda managed to keep the wine at £3.97 - the cheapest on the list - for another week and records its 13th week as the UK's cheapest retailer with a £51.75 basket. Asda offered five of the lowest-priced items on the list across items as diverse as Andrex toilet roll - which dropped 37p - and Cadbury Dairy Milk. All six retailers cut the price of white seedless grapes this week: Sainsbury's and Tesco by 99p, Asda and Morrisons by £1 and Waitrose and Somerfield by a hefty £2 and £2.50 respectively. Second-placed Morrisons followed the rest of the big four by upping bananas by 9p and matched their prices for the Ginsters Cornish pasty by upping the price by 38p. Its £52.11 basket was aided by the relatively low price of its £7 beef rump steak - nearly £2 less than at Asda and Tesco. With a basket only a penny less than Tesco's, Sainsbury's made one of its rare forays into third position this week after undercutting Tesco on the beef rump steak by £1. Tesco had a busy week for price changes. As well as the increase on bananas and Hardys and the drop on white seedless grapes, Tesco upped Marmite to equal Asda's price and pushed up its Hula Hoops to make them the second priciest on the list. But it balanced these hikes with cuts, knocking 50p off the brie and 17p off Wall's sausages. There was also 1p separating the totals at Waitrose and Somerfield. The latter had this week's biggest saving: its £10.49 rump steak dropped to £6.99, the cheapest on the list. But despite this reduction, it was the most expensive retailer and had twice the number of highest prices Waitrose had. Waitrose's basket benefited from having the second-cheapest Hardys wine.
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