Price wars as store cuts cost of 1,000 items
SUPERMARKET chain Morrisons is set to ignite a post-Brexit price war today as it launches its “biggest ever sale”.
The store is slashing the price of more than 1,000 products, including meat, fruit and vegetables and toiletries. Other chains are likely to follow suit.
The move is another blow for the EU Remain camp, who claimed a Leave vote would spell economic disaster for the UK.
Instead, in one of the first major cuts since Brexit, Morrisons prices will be slashed by as much as 56 per cent.
Other supermarket chains have yet to react to the announcement but in the past such a move has led other key players – including the remaining members of the “big four”, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda – to make similar discounts.
Morrisons spokesman Andy Atkinson said: “We are constantly listening to our customers and know they are concerned about whether food prices will go up following the Brexit vote, especially imports.
“Morrisons is unique as a foodmaker and shopkeeper and, unlike the rest of the industry, manufactures food, both in our own food processing plants and in our 500 stores.
“We are British farming’s biggest supermarket customer, which means we can better control our prices, and this latest round of crunches demonstrates our commitment to offering the best possible value to our customers this summer.”
Morrisons said its “biggest ever price crunch” will result in an average of 18 per cent being cut from the price of 1,045 everyday products – including hundreds of grocery and dairy items.
The average discount across the bakery and dairy sections is 18 per cent, while in health and beauty it is 27 per cent. Meat will go down 12 per cent and fruit and veg will fall 17 per cent on average.
There have been ongoing price wars between the major UK supermarkets in recent years, spurred on by the success of German budget stores Aldi and Lidl.
Neil Saunders, of research agency Conlumino, said competitive pressures made a price war inevitable. He added: “It is more likely to be price skirmishes on key items and headline-grabbing offers.”
Despite gloomy predictions, figures released this week show the UK economy actually picked up pace in the run-up to Brexit thanks to the strongest performance from industrial production since 1999.
Gross domestic product grew by a higher than expected 0.6 per cent over the past three months, up from 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2016.