The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) has responded to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures on price inflation.
The ONS has reported that prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by 10.1% in the year to October 2023, down from 12.2% in September and a recent high of 19.2% in March 2023, the highest annual rate seen in over 45 years.
Despite the slowing rate of inflation, prices were around 30% lower in October 2021 when looking at the October 2023 rates.
Karen Betts, chief executive of the FDF, said: “It’s good to see food and drink price inflation fall again, for the seventh consecutive month, to 10.1% in October from 12.2% in September.
"This reflects a fall in some input costs – although these are not falling uniformly across the board – as well as the efforts that food and drink manufacturers have taken over more than two years to shield shoppers from the full impact of inflation. This has impacted manufacturing margins, which have fallen to their lowest levels in 40 years."
Betts continued: “While today’s figures are good news for shoppers, they come at the same time as we are seeing a concerning drop in investment in our industry, with investment in the first half of this year more than a third lower than in the same period four years ago.
"For the industry to recover its resilience after the shocks of recent years, we need the Government urgently to review the conditions for investment in our sector.
"Making full expensing permanent in the Autumn Statement would be significant in incentivising investment. As would concerted Government action to improve existing and planned regulation that is adding avoidable costs to the industry, from Extended Producer Responsibility, the Plastics Packaging Tax, “Not for EU” labelling and the Apprenticeship Levy.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
