LONDON (Reuters) - Sales of own-label products at British supermarkets have grown at double the speed of branded goods in 2023, data from market researchers NIQ showed on Wednesday, as customers adjust to soaring prices.
Food prices are up more than 19% over the last year, outpacing the broader inflation rate across the whole economy and adding strain to household budgets already stretched by high energy bills and other price increases.
The latest data showed value sales of own-label goods grew by 14.1% compared to branded product growth of 7.1%. In the last four weeks, the volume share of own-label sales rose to 63.3% in the fast-moving consumer goods' category, versus 62.1% in 2022.
Earlier this month Tesco (LON:TSCO), Britain's biggest supermarket group, cut the price of its own-brand pasta, vegetable and sunflower oil.
Food retailers have said they expect prices to rise in 2023 overall but with the rate of inflation declining through the year.
On Tuesday, Britain's competition regulator told supermarkets it was looking at their earnings to identify which supply chains it needed to examine more closely as part of efforts to tackle food price inflation.