Source: Radio New Zealand
Food prices have gone up 4.5 percent in the year to February. RNZ / Richard Tindiller
A humble spag bol dinner may no longer be an option for people on a tight budget, with the price of mince rising to its highest level since records began.
Food prices have gone up 4.5 percent in the year to February, with beef mince up a whopping 23.2 percent to $24.46 per kilogram.
Fruit and veggies also shot up by 9.4 percent and meat, poultry and fish were up 7.5 percent annually.
Checkpoint has also been monitoring the cost of everyday groceries across the different supermarket chains for the past four years, we did the same on Tuesday.
Shoppers were squinting their eyes and shaking their heads as they looked over their grocery receipts outside PAK’nSAVE in Auckland’s Royal Oak.
“Nothing’s gone down, everything else has gone up, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables and cheese [it’s] shocking,” one shopper told RNZ.
“It really has changed things in our everyday lives, especially when you have six kids,” said another.
While another person was concerned about wages not keeping up with inflation. “In the last two years, we’ve had to just gradually step up our groceries budget which has been really difficult cause wages don’t always increase to cover the inflation at the same time.”
The rising costs were also tough for those on pensions. “I’m a pensioner, I live on a fixed income so it’s crazy.”
While another person commented on the lengths some people are considering. “I was looking at this lady walking down one aisle and she had very pink eyes looking at the pet food and I thought I know what she’s thinking, it’s getting too hard”.
Stats NZ data out on Tuesday found food prices were up 4.5 percent in the year to February, with mince recording its biggest ever increase – up $4.60 per kilogram.
Sirloin steak wasn’t far behind, shooting up 21.4 percent over the year to $44.71 per kilogram.
Bad news for chocolate lovers, too, with a 250-gram block up 20.3 percent.
Shoppers told Checkpoint because of the high price of some items such as cheese, they have stopped buying them.
One shopper said “more frozen veggies instead of fresh, if they’re not as cheap.”
While the price of butter was still causing pain. “The butter, it’s crazy, it’s almost doubled.”
Some shoppers said their habits had changed. “I don’t buy red meat.”
And the classic kiwi staple was also raising eyebrows. “I used to buy 500 grams of good quality mince, it used to be 10, 11 dollars, now it’s 14.”
It wasn’t all bad news, though olive oil was down 22.1 percent to $17.62 a litre and eggs saw a 6.2 percent drop to $8.77 per dozen.
BNZ chief economist Mike Jones said international meat prices are at record levels, driven in particularly by a tightening in the United States market.
“Cattle numbers are at the lowest level since 1951 so they are short of beef, and that is pushing the global price up.
“We’re now seeing that reflected more and more in retail prices that we are paying.”
He said it’s a similar story for many everyday essentials.
“Much higher mince and meat prices, you’ve got bread, veggies all going up, in some cases in double digits.
“We’re [also] staring down some pretty big increases in petrol prices, so it is very much concentrated in some of those essential categories.
“So, it’s going to be particularly tough going I think for households that never really got much relief [from] the cost of living.”
Checkpoint has done the same shop every year since 2022 to compare prices at the country’s main supermarket chains.
We did another comparison on Tuesday in light of Tuesday’s Stats NZ data.
In May 2022, Checkpoint’s shop at Woolworths Greenlane cost $238 and was $217 at PAK’nSAVE Royal Oak.
On Tuesday those items at PAK’nSAVE have shot up to a total of $257, an extra $40.
A shop at Woolworths coming out at $293, adding an extra $55.
Compared to our shop in 2022, most fresh fruits and vegetables were more expensive, but overall, most are at least a dollar cheaper compared to last year.
Other items that are cheaper or have stayed the same throughout the years are Wattie’s Baked Beans, tomato sauce, Marmite, Pam’s canned diced tomatoes, a kilogram’s worth of plain white rice and items in the baking aisle such as plain flour and sugar.
But meat and dairy products are clearly hurting shoppers the most, with a kilogram of mince at Woolworths at $21.90 a kilogram, that’s an extra $7.
Other shoppers told Checkpoint the cost of gluten-free products had gone up over the years, and some were buying items such as butter in bulk to cut costs.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
