Retail prices increase for liquid milk
Published 29 May 2008

Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys have all increased their liquid milk prices this month. The price of a four pint polybottle rose by 10 pence to £1.44. Year on year, the price of a four pint polybottle has increased by 29p (25%) – from £1.15 to £1.44.

	May 2007	price from September 2007	May 2008
1 pint	£0.35	£0.40	£0.42
2 pint	£0.66	£0.76	£0.80
4 pint	£1.15	£1.34	£1.44
6 pint	£1.68	£1.96	£2.12
Average price of milk in 'big 4' supermarkets (weighted)	52.28ppl	60.72ppl	64.98ppl

As the table above shows, on average (weighted across all pack sizes) the retail price of milk has increased by 12.7ppl since May 2008. Over the past year, the most recent data from Defra suggests that, farmgate milk prices have increased by around 8.1ppl. Therefore processors and/or retailers have more than passed on to consumers the extra cost caused by higher farmgate prices perhaps in order to cover increased processing and distribution costs.

In addition to the price increases both Asda and Tesco have promotional multibuy offers running on 4pint and 6 pint containers. Two 4pint polybottles can be purchased for £2- a saving of 88p and two 6pint polybottles can be purchased for £3 - a saving of £1.24. This offer is set to run until the middle of June.

Doorstep prices also increased at the end of April with Dairy Crest putting prices up by 4p per pint – equivalent to an increase of 7ppl. In the past two months doorstep prices have increased from 48p per pint to 56p – this is equivalent to a 14ppl increase.