Grocery bills slashed as supermarkets fight it out

GROCERY bills are set to be slashed this week as supermarkets unleash a new wave of price cuts.

Morrisons will launch the autumn offensive tomorrow with cuts of up to 20 per cent on meat and poultry and more than a third off vegetables.

Other supermarkets are understood to be preparing their own deep discounts in what is set to be one of the fiercest rounds yet of price cutting in the battle for shoppers.

The autumn offensive is the latest attempt by Britain’s biggest grocers to fight off the invasion by German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Just last month, Lidl emerged as the fastest-growing supermarket in the UK, with Aldi a close second. Between them they have captured a 10.7 per cent share of the grocery market, up from 6 per cent five years ago.

Senior supermarket sources said the UK’s grocery giants were beginning to close the gap on price and would continue to do so in the coming weeks. One said: ‘You can expect things to get aggressive.’

Among its cuts this week, Morrisons will reduce the price of topside beef steak from £12.50 to £10 per kilogram, 400g of waferthin cooked ham from £1.87 to £1.56, salad tomatoes from 65p to 56p and pre-packaged broccoli from 60p to 38p.

The price comparison website MySupermarket.com said this weekend that grocery prices had fallen 4 per cent in the past year – cutting billions of pounds off the nation’s bills. It said the price of onions was down 35 per cent, broccoli 20 per cent, mushrooms 11 per cent and bananas 9 per cent.

MySupermarket chief executive Gilad Simhony said the battle of the supermarkets meant a welcome drop in prices amid ‘a period of uncertainty post-Brexit’.

The sharp fall in the value of the pound since the referendum had been expected to push up the prices of imported food, feeding through to higher prices for shoppers.

But the intensification of the supermarket price war could now mean they will attempt to absorb any increase in costs by taking the hit with lower profit margins.