Asda boss warns of further grocery inflation
Asda chairman Lord Rose has warned that food prices will keep rising, and remain higher “for quite some time” due to the increasing costs of raw materials.
Speaking to the BBC, the Conservative peer warned that many families struggling with the cost of living crisis are “going to suffer”.
He said: “Chicken feed is going up, and all the other associated costs are going up – I see no quick solution to this.
“Pasta is made from durum wheat, and durum wheat has gone up in price, so that’s an inevitable cost increase.”
This news follows the latest results produced by Asda’s Income Tracker, which revealed that UK households experienced the biggest fall in discretionary income on record in March 2022 due to soaring living costs.
The Income Tracker showed that after paying taxes and essential bills, households had an average discretionary income of £231 per week in March, down £16.19 a week year-on-year, representing the largest fall since the tracker was created in 2008.
As a result of rising living costs, household discretionary income has now fallen for the fifth consecutive month and is now at the lowest level in 19 months.
In a separate survey of more than 1,000 Asda shoppers, nine out of ten said they are worried about the cost-of-living, with 44% stating they are looking to make their grocery budgets stretch further by purchasing products on promotion.
To help customers tackle rising living costs, Asda is introducing a series of new initiatives. These include a £73 million investment to ‘Drop and Lock’ the prices of 100 products for the rest of this year.
A budget-friendly essentials range – ‘Just Essentials at Asda’, a value focused range, will launch later this month.
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