Average Grocery basket prices rise ahead of Christmas

According to shopping and comparison website MySupermarket’s an average monthly Groceries Tracker found the price of a basket containing 35 popular items came to £85.22 when compared to the previous month‘s £84.90.

Overall, there is an increase in cost of 16 products, 18 decreased and 2 items stayed at the same price.

Comparing October this year to same period last year, the same basket of goods costs £1.94 more on average which equates to a 2% year on year increase.

The latest Groceries Tracker was released just a week after BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index, which indicated that overall shop prices decreased at their slowest rate in 4 years during October at just -0.1%.

BRC-Nielsen found that food prices continued to remain in inflation territory with a 2.2% increase.

MySupermarket’s tracker found the price of an average basket of goods up by the trolley staples such as onions and toilet rolls. Savings were possible on seasonal items including broccoli and apples.

Onions was the biggest price increase which saw 19% increase from £1.11 to £1.32 per kg between September and October.

A steady price increase of 9% over 2017 has been seen in butter, increased 5% between September and October, while mushrooms increased by 4%.

Price increase can also be seen in paper goods such as kitchen towels by 3% and toilet rolls 5%.

A decrease in price can be seen in household staples such as pasta and frozen pizza, with 1kg of dried pasta costing at 7% less in October compared to September and frozen pizza fell 2% from £1.83 to £1.78.

Fresh seasonal items such as apples also fell 2% in between October and September 2017.

The biggest price drop among fresh items seen by Tomatoes, falling 5% from £2.74 to £2.60 per 500g between September and October 2017.

A 4% decrease observed for broccoli in between September and October, still 36% more expensive than the same period last year. The same applied for carrots, which are 27% more expensive year-on-year.

Prices remained same for sausages and chipolatas.

Groceries Tracker monitors the cost of the most commonly used 35 items bought grocery products monthly from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, Waitrose, Lidl and Morrisons.