LONDON (Reuters) - Morrisons (L:MRW), Britain's fourth largest supermarket group, has announced another wave of price cuts, fuelling an already fierce industry price war.
Like market leader Tesco (L:TSCO), Sainsbury's (L:SBRY) and Asda (N:WMT), Morrisons is lowering prices to try to reverse the flow of shoppers turning to discounters Aldi [ALDIEI.UL] and Lidl [LIDUK.UL].
All players are also having to deal with commodity-driven industry price deflation.
The company, based in Bradford, northern England, said it will this week reduce prices on nearly 130 cooked meat, fresh meat and poultry products by an average of 12 percent.
The prices of 30 fruit and vegetable lines will also be cut.
Morrisons is unique among Britain’s major supermarkets in making half of all the own brand and fresh food it sells.
“We’re a British company, making our own ham and buying our own cattle here in Britain. By doing this efficiently ourselves we can pass much-needed savings on to customers," said customer and marketing director Andy Atkinson.
The firm said that so far this year it has reduced the prices of more than 4,400 products.
Separately on Monday a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said food prices in August fell at the fastest pace on record, dropping 1.1 percent after a fall of 0.8 percent in July. [nL3N1BE4AQ]
BRC Chief Executive Helen Dickinson said the devaluation of sterling in the wake of Britain's decision to quit the European Union would put upward pressure on shop prices though it would likely take several months to properly feed through.