Severe drought drives up rice prices
Research by ingredients firm Eurostar Commodities found that the volume of the next Spanish long grain rice crop will drop by 70% as a consequence of severe drought.
It also found that production in Portugal was expected to decrease by 10-20% as availability in some areas was not sufficient enough to allow the growing of rice at all.
Prices in the East
Rising prices in the Far East and the continued growing demand for large quantities of long grain rice from Europe would see price increase by 29%.
Eurostar Commodities director Jason Bull said: “Food price inflation is still going strong and increasing due to drought and raw material availability issues. If we then add in currency exchange rates, transportation and fuel costs, and finance interest then the market is in a situation where price will rise sharply from early December of this year.
“Retailers, restaurants and the food service industry will either have to absorb these additional costs or pass them on to customers. The market is now increasing prices to reflect a substantial decrease in raw product and huge hikes. Food inflation still has a way to go.”
Skyrocketing prices
Meanwhile, the prices of vegetable oil, pasta, tea and chips have skyrocketed as the cost-of-living crisis takes hold, according to new data from the Office National Statistics.
Web-scraped supermarket data for 30 everyday grocery items, saw the prices of 15 items rising by 15% or more.
Vegetable oil showed the largest percentage increase and average price increase between April 2022 and September 2022, up by 46% (80p per litre) followed by chips (up 27p to £1.37 for 1.5kg) and milk (up 25p to £1.52 for four pints). In contrast, orange juice showed the largest decrease, falling by -8% (6p per litre) and beef mince (down 5p to £1.95 for 500g).
