Rising cream pushes up pavlova ingredient prices
Your summer pavlova costs more than 40 per cent more to make this year than it did 10 years ago – and commentators think that trend will continue.
Statistics New Zealand data shows it costs $11.07 to acquire all the ingredients for a pavlova this year. Ten years ago it was $7.88.
The cost of cream was the biggest contributor to the increase: 300 millilitres cost $1.50 in 2007 but $2.62 this year.
Kiwifruit also increased 55 per cent in price, from 44 cents for 200 grams in 2007 to 68c this year.
Murray Harris, head of wealth management and advice at Milford Asset Management, said price rises were inevitable.
‘‘We produce goods, such as dairy [and] fresh fruit, that the rest of the world has cottoned on to and now want and are in high demand.
‘‘Therefore economics 101 and supply-demand curves means unfortunately we are going to pay more for our traditional Kiwi favourites. It’s a fact of life but think of the flip side – the great export earnings, the employment and the other spending in the economy that this generates.’’
Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said ANZ’s commodity price index showed that dairy prices were actually 24 per cent lower in the September 2017 quarter compared with the same time in 2007.
‘‘The lift in international dairy prices during 2007 was very sharp and it’s possible that the cream price as recorded by Stats NZ in 2007 had not fully responded to the global price lift,’’ he said.
‘‘Similarly, ANZ’s horticulture prices were only 12 per cent higher in September 2017 than in September 2007.
‘‘So the cream and kiwifruit and strawberry components look like they’re unusually expensive at the moment, or perhaps were unusually cheap back in 2007.’’
The long-term outlook was for pavlova ingredients’ prices to rise.
Kiernan said the prediction was for kiwifruit prices to be up another 11 per cent in the year to June 2018 and 13 per cent over the four years to 2022.
Moves away from battery and colony cages were also likely to push up egg prices, he said.