Food price rises unlikely before summer, says boss of Sainsbury’s
📖 Full Retelling
<p>Simon Roberts says Easter shop will be unaffected by Middle East conflict, but industry warns prices may rise this year</p><p>Shoppers will not see food prices rise until at least the summer and Easter will be unaffected by conflict in the Middle East, the boss of Sainsbury’s has said, despite fears of an inflation spike.</p><p>Simon Roberts said it was “too early” to say whether and when food price inflation related to higher commodity costs would hit supermarke
Entity Intersection Graph
No entity connections available yet for this article.
Original Source
Food price rises unlikely before summer, says boss of Sainsbury’s Simon Roberts says Easter shop will be unaffected by Middle East conflict, but industry warns prices may rise this year Shoppers will not see food prices rise until at least the summer and Easter will be unaffected by conflict in the Middle East, the boss of Sainsbury’s has said, despite fears of an inflation spike. Simon Roberts said it was “too early” to say whether and when food price inflation related to higher commodity costs would hit supermarket shelves and that the UK’s second-largest supermarket had long-term agreements with suppliers to help protect shoppers. “We have a lot of the tools to make sure we’ll do everything possible to contain the impact on inflation,” he said. “Obviously we are watching and monitoring events closely. “We’re not looking at immediate consequences or near-term consequences that we don’t think we’ve got a plan to navigate.” Farmers across the world are facing rising costs , as the closure of the strait of Hormuz affects about a third of the global seaborne trade in fertilisers. “Volatility and uncertainty for farmers has only become a bigger issue for them. They need certainty on making sure they can see what’s coming,” Roberts said. Speaking from a fruit farm in Kent, where Sainsbury’s has signed a new five-year deal with a berry producer as part of a plan to invest £5bn in longer-term contracts, Roberts added that the effects of the war were unlikely to hit food prices until the summer at the earliest as, for example, many farmers had bought fertiliser and fuel before the disruption and many businesses had hedged commodity costs. He said the impact would become clearer in three to five weeks and was helped by the British growing season getting under way, meaning food imports will be lower until the autumn. Any impact on price would be linked to “how long this situation may or may not ” and “what happens ultimately to the cost of oil”, Roberts said. “It’s not going...
Read full article at source