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Supermarket deals have helped grocery price inflation ease for a fourth consecutive month.

Closely watched data from Kantar Worldpanel, which tracks supermarket sales and prices, charted the steepest decline in grocery inflation during the four weeks to 9 July since grocery inflation peaked in March.

Its inflation measure fell by 1.6 percentage points to 14.9% over the period – bolstering hopes that the worst of the pain from the pace of price increases at the tills is over as the wider cost of living crisis continues to shift.

Kantar said while the grocery inflation figure reflected a further easing in the cost of many staple goods, there was a marked move towards customer spending on promotions, which now accounted for just over a quarter of the total market.

As the grocery sector’s prices continue to be investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority, Kantar’s head of retail Fraser McKevitt said: “One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in this [promotions] area is retailers ramping up loyalty card deals like Tesco’s Clubcard Prices and Sainsbury’s Nectar Prices.

“This could signal a change in focus by the grocers who had been concentrating their efforts on everyday low pricing, particularly by offering more value own-label lines.”

Kantar noted that Sainsbury’s rate of sales growth had overtaken that of market leader Tesco over the four-week period.

Its report said customers had, on average, saved themselves from paying an extra £353 over the past year by changing their typical grocery habits, such as through trading down to cheaper products or visiting different grocers.

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ONS: One in 20 adults out of food

New threat from war to food prices

The report was released against a backdrop of new concerns about the outlook for food security and many staple food costs.

Prices for corn, wheat and soybean surged on commodity markets on Monday after Russia formally withdrew from a deal brokered by the United Nations that enabled millions of tonnes of grain exports from Ukraine to reach their destination.

Nearly 33 million tonnes of corn, wheat and other grains have been exported by Ukraine under the agreement.

The war in Ukraine has been a major factor behind energy-led inflation in Western economies though the cost of living crisis is continuing to evolve.

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Hunt sets out plan to cut inflation

Inflation expected to fall this week

While food inflation is easing, the main rate of inflation in the UK has proved more stubborn to bring down than expected with the Bank of England suggesting that wage rises, at a rate above 7%, are a factor and too high.

The Bank’s governor has also accused companies of looking to make excessive profits.

Official figures on Wednesday are tipped by economists to show that the main Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure of inflation eased back to an annual rate just above 8% from 8.7% in May.

The data is widely expected to reflect Kantar’s findings which offer some limited relief for hard-pressed family budgets.

While energy costs have fallen back, finances are facing an additional squeeze from the effects of the Bank’s interest rate hikes aimed at tackling inflation with some mortgage rates at 15-year highs.

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Spanish-owned Scottish Power sparks merger talks with Ovo Energy

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Spanish-owned Scottish Power sparks merger talks with Ovo Energy

Scottish Power, the Spanish-owned energy supplier, and larger rival Ovo Energy have begun holding exploratory talks about a merger that would create a company serving more than six million British households.

Sky News has learnt that executives from Iberdrola, which owns Scottish Power, and Ovo have been engaged in preliminary discussions in recent weeks about the possibility of a deal.

The talks are at an early stage and any formal transaction would be months away, if it materialised at all.

If the two companies do agree a merger of their residential gas and electricity operations, it would create the third-largest supplier behind Centrica-owned British Gas and Octopus Energy.

As the larger company, with 4 million customers, Ovo would probably be the acquiring entity, but with Iberdrola potentially contributing cash and remaining as a shareholder in the enlarged group, according to one banking source.

Scottish Power serves about 2.4 million households.

The discussions between the two companies are running in parallel to a separate process through which Ovo is exploring the potential to raise roughly £300m from the sale of new shares in the company, according to industry sources.

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In recent weeks, a number of financial investors have been contacted by Rothschild, the investment bank advising Ovo, about the opportunity.

Exactly a year ago, Sky News revealed that Ovo had hired Rothschild to explore options, including bringing in a new investor or a sale, 15 years after it launched in a bid to challenge the industry’s oligopoly.

Founded by Stephen Fitzpatrick, the entrepreneur who now owns London’s Kensington Roof Gardens, Ovo’s shareholders include the private equity firm Mayfair Equity Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Mitsubishi Corporation, the Japanese conglomerate.

Under Mr Fitzpatrick, who launched Ovo in 2009, the company positioned itself as a challenger brand offering superior service to the industry’s established players.

Ovo’s transformational moment came in 2020, when it bought the retail supply arm of SSE, transforming it overnight into one of Britain’s leading energy companies.

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Its growth has not been without difficulties, however, particularly in relation to its challenged relationship with Ofgem and a torrent of customer complaints about overcharging.

Justin King, the former J Sainsbury chief who now chairs Ovo, has made repairing its regulatory relationships a priority for the company.

He also oversaw the recruitment of David Buttress, who was briefly Boris Johnson’s cost-of-living tsar after leaving the top job at Just Eat, as its chief executive.

Key to Ovo’s longer-term valuation will be the performance of its technology platform, Kaluza, which was set up to license software to other energy suppliers and provides customers with smart electric vehicle charging and heat pumps.

Ovo announced last year that AGL Energy, one of Australia’s biggest energy suppliers, had bought a 20% stake in Kaluza at a $500m (£395m) valuation.

The British energy company has also entered the electric vehicle car charging sector under the brand Charge Anywhere, adding tens of thousands of public charging points across the UK.

Iberdrola bought Scottish Power in 2007 in a deal valuing the company at more than £11bn.

Next week, the UK’s energy price cap will fall by 7% to £1,720 a year, following an announcement by Ofgem, the industry regulator.

Ovo and Scottish Power both declined to comment.

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Nike says Trump tariffs could cost it $1bn

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Nike says Trump tariffs could cost it bn

Nike’s costs will go up $1bn (£728m) this year if US President Donald Trump’s tariffs remain at the current level, the company has told investors.

It follows a warning from the sports brand last month that it would raise prices due to the taxes imposed on imports.

Work to bring down costs is under way, including reducing supplies from China to the US.

It’s to reduce the amount of footwear made in China and imported to the US from 16% currently to a “high single digit” figure with Chinese supply being “reallocated to other countries around the world”.

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On 2 April, Mr Trump announced country-specific tariffs which hit China hardest and escalated after several rounds of retaliatory rises.

After an agreement between Washington and Beijing the levy was brought down from a 145% tariff to 30% on Chinese goods.

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Trump’s tariffs: What you need to know

Price rises for consumers will start to come into effect in the autumn.

The latest warning on tariffs comes as Nike reported the worst quarterly results in more than three years.

Revenues were $11.1bn (£8.1bn) – the lowest since the third quarter of 2022.

It has been dealing with the after-effects of an unsuccessful move to sell direct-to-consumer with Wall Street analysts also critical of its dependence on lifestyle products and reliance on fashion trends.

Nike chief executive Elliott Hill had returned from retirement last year to again take the top job at the company.

The worst of the trade wars have already occurred, Mr Hill said, with “the headwinds to moderate from here”.

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Post Office: Police identify seven suspects related to Horizon scandal

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Post Office: Police identify seven suspects related to Horizon scandal

Police investigating the Horizon Post Office scandal have now identified seven suspects, with more than 45 people classed as “persons of interest”.

A “scaled-up” national team of officers has been in place for over six months as part of Operation Olympos – dedicated to looking at crimes related to the Horizon Post Office scandal.

The number of suspects has increased to seven since before Christmas, as part of a UK-wide investigation involving 100 officers.

Four have now been interviewed under caution.

Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongfully convicted of stealing after faulty computer software created false accounting shortfalls in Post Office branches between 1999 and 2015.

Commander Stephen Clayman, Gold Command for Operation Olympos, described a “huge shift” in terms of their investigation and “significant progress”.

Commander Stephen Clayman
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Commander Stephen Clayman

“We’ve got over four million documents that are going to rise to about six million documents,” he said, “but we’re beginning to methodically work through those and looking at individuals who are associated with certain prosecutions.”

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He described a “pool of about 45 people plus” classed as “persons of interest”, with that number “expected to grow”.

He added that officers have questioned “some” in the past and “more recently” and are looking at the offences of perverting the course of justice and perjury.

The “wider pool” of persons of interest is made up of Post Office investigators, lawyers, and “management” across Fujitsu and the Post Office.

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Post Office knew about faulty IT system

The team of officers will be identifying actions which could amount to criminal offences on both an individual and corporate basis.

Any decisions made on whether to charge will not happen until after the Post Office inquiry findings are “published and reviewed”.

The Operation Olympos officers are part of four teams – a London hub and three regional teams – who have been described as “highly motivated” across England and Wales.

Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are also helping.

Cmdr Clayman said that officers “will be building a robust case” to pass on to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Operation Olympos
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Officer working in one of the four Operation Olympos teams

He also added that, compared to the inquiry, his officers will have to “prove this to the criminal standard…a much, much higher standard”.

He described feeling “optimistic” and “confident” that the teams will have “some successful outcomes”, and said they are “working as hard and as quickly as (they) can”.

Teams are involved in what has been described as a “focused strategy which gets to the heart of the issues”.

Their investigations are being overseen by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Metropolitan Police.

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Victims have also been told that the police will not be reinvestigating every case but “taking a speculative look at cases” to focus on key people involved and evidence for prosecution.

Operation Olympos is also making use of special software to help process the amount of evidence to sift through material in relation to key events and identified cases.

Of the four suspects interviewed under caution, two were questioned in late 2021, one in late 2024 and the most recent in early 2025.

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