Only one supermarket passes on milk price rise
ONLY one of the major supermarkets appears to have passed on to customers yesterday’s 12.6% increase in the wholesale price of milk.
A litre of milk was £1.72 at Morrisons, while the four other major supermarkets were still charging between £1.50 and £1.55.
Mark Hesse had gone into the Morrisons store at L’Islet with what he thought would be just the right amount of money.
‘It’s normally £1.55, I had the change ready.
‘The increase just falls in line with everything else. We are paying for Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine.’
The cost of a litre at the Dairy gate rose from £1.21 to £1.36 yesterday. This is above the current rate of inflation, which stands at 8.5%.
The increase is to offset higher costs being faced by farmers, who will receive a 10% increase in what they are paid for their product, while reducing financial losses at Guernsey Dairy.
The States said last month that it expected retailers to put up their prices by as much as 15p to maintain margins.
Other shoppers yesterday had not noticed the hike in price immediately.
Chantelle Boyd said, although she wasn’t pleased with the increase, she felt it was still a good quality local product
‘I remember when it was under a pound, but I’d rather Guernsey milk than anything else.’
The price hike is separate from the £723,000-worth of taxpayer funding provided to dairy farmers over the past six months.
This was provided from the Budget Reserve specifically to offset large increases in the costs of fertiliser and feed caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which worked out at about 6.4p per litre of milk supplied.
