Festive Alcohol Price Hikes Ease Supermarket Deflation

A rise in the price of festive booze helped overall supermarket deflation ease for the fist time since the summer. The Grocer Price Index, collated by Brand View m over 62,000 SKU's across the big four grocers, came back to -1.88% year on year for the month to 1 January from -2.36% in the previous month. The biggest culprit for the easing of overall deflation was a rise in the price of alcohol in the run up to Christmas. Overall, year-on-year alcohol prices moved from -3.4% in the month to 1 December, to +0.4% in the month to 1 January.