Bread to cost more dough

THE price of bread is set to rise after a surge in the cost of wheat.

Food giant Allied Bakeries said it would soon be forced to pass on losses incurred because of more expensive wheat.

Warning that the current situation was ‘unsustainable’, George Weston, of parent company Associated British Foods, said Allied was negotiating with retailers.

Trade magazine The Grocer said UK wheat futures surged in the wake of last year’s Brexit vote, with prices for feed wheat rising 14 per cent in the six months after the vote. By February, they were up 38 per cent year on year.

Alex Waugh, of the National Association of British and Irish Flour Millers, said prices were up about 20 per cent year on year. He told The Grocer: ‘That is mainly because of the decline in the value of the pound. Wheat is priced globally so the exchange rate really makes a difference.’

Mr Waugh warned that with sterling unlikely to recover soon, and supplies set until the next harvest, bakers are unlikely to see any easing of prices.