Grocery price inflation sets a record high

Grocery prices increased by 16.8% during the first 12 weeks of this year, adding more than €1,200 to annual grocery bills

Sales of supermarket own-label products have increased by 34.5% over the last year as people look to save money. Photograph: Getty Images

Grocery prices increased by 16.8% during the first 12 weeks of this year as more and more customers move to supermarket own-label products to save money, new figures show.

Data from analytics company Kantar shows that if Irish people don’t change their spending habits they could see an additional €1,211 added to their annual grocery bill as a result of this inflation. These figures are based on over 30,000 identical products being compared year-on-year.

Kantar said the value of grocery sales during the four weeks up to March 19 were 13.3% compared to a month previous but this was being largely driven by grocery price inflation rather than just increased spending.

Emer Healy, senior retail analyst at Kantar, said that grocery prices continues to rise with annual inflation during the first three months of the year now at 16.8% - the highest level on record. 

She said the annual grocery bill “set to rise by €1,211 if consumers don’t make changes to their shopping habits”.

The rising costs of groceries see more and more people moving towards supermarket’s own brand products. Sales of own label products grew 13.5% compared to the previous month while sales of brand name products only went up 6.2%.

Year-on-year, sales of own-label products grew by 34.5% or €18m.

During this period, the big five supermarket chains increased their share of the total consumer spend in Ireland to 91.5% compared to 90.8% during the same period in 2022.

Of the total consumer spend, 23.2% was in Dunnes Stores - up from 22.4% during the same period in 2022. Overall spend in Tesco was 22.1%, up from 21.3%, while SuperValu saw their proportion of the spend drop from 21.6% in 2022 to 20.6% this year.

Budget supermarkets Lidl and Aldi accounted for 13.3% and 12.3% of the total consumer spend respectively.

Despite some supermarket chains seeing a drop in their proportion of total spent, the overall amount spent was up 9.5% in the first three months of the year compared to 2022 - contributing an additional €268m to the overall market performance.

Footfall in Irish supermarkets during March were at their highest levels since March 2020 following a number of celebrations taking place over the course of the month including St Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day as well as the Ireland team winning the Six Nations.

Ms Healy said shopper visits grew 13% year-on-year which in actual terms means “shoppers made two additional trips to stores in March”.

“Consumers are opting to shop little and often to help manage their household budget,” she said.

Irish consumers also paid more for savoury snacks and soft drinks with sales hitting €3.5m and €4.4m respectively. Shoppers were also out early shopping for Easter chocolate with large eggs proving the most popular. Sales were up 86% year-on-year with shoppers spending an additional €3.8m.

Sales of Guinness were up 6.7% during the month, equating to an additional €623,000.