Food prices place main strain on UK wallets

Current economic landscape and rising cost of living

The prices of many daily essentials including milk and eggs may have decreased recently but overall food and drink inflation is still at record high levels, putting a lot of strain on the wallets of UK families. Read about how grocery prices are set to become the top stress on household budgets below in this Power to the Pricing People news roundup.

With inflation still remaining high across the globe, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and global supply chain disruptions, the central banks are battling to stabilize the cash rate and control prices. The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to the highest level in 16 years. This marks the 10th rate hike in 14 months, pushing the benchmark rate to a range of between 5% and 5.25%. Similarly, the European Central Bank has also raised rates by 0.25 percentage points and Australia’s rates have again increased for 12^th time in the past 13^th months.

Read more about how higher rates have spurred a slowdown in certain sectors.

Food prices are predicted to overcome energy prices in driving inflation, according to the UK think tank Resolution Foundation. The cost of groceries, which has already shot up by almost 20% in the past year, will continue to increase while energy prices are expected to decline. The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey has expressed concern that food and other non-energy prices would remain elevated over the next few months, eating into the disposable incomes of millions of UK households.

Read more about the financial strain this is predicted to place on UK families.

Innovations in pricing

We recently hosted the world’s first (or at least most fun) pricing pub quiz at the EPP FMCG Pricing and RGM 2023 Forum where our Power to the Pricing People hostess with the mostest hit the stage to address inflation, the need for pricing execution speed and the power of intelligent automated pricing.

Read our top takeaways about what’s keeping consumer goods pricing peeps up at night.

Now more than ever pricing professionals are at the forefront of driving organizations through these turbulent times and finding the right solutions to do more with less. Chat with us about how Flintfox can help you execute your reimagined pricing strategies with speed and precision.