Cheesed off — the price of a 1kg block of tasty cheese is now out of reach for some

Friday, 2 July 2021

Mother of three, Nikita Clode when shopping with 8-month-old Poppy, found her favourite cheese too expensive for her family this week.

Taking home a large block of good quality tasty cheese with the weekly shop is out of reach for some as price hikes push up prices to nearly $20 a kilogram.

This week 1kg of Mainland tasty cheese cost $16.20/kg at Countdown and was promoted as a “special” down from the usual price of $18.20 a block.

New World pitched it is a 'saver” special at $16.49. Pak ‘n Save’s online store had an “extra low” banner on its price of $16.29.

The traditionally cheaper brands carrying Countdown’s in-house Signature Range tasty was $17.50 a kilo, $1.30 more than Mainland.

Wairarapa resident Kay Martin said prices had steadily climbed this year.

**READ MORE:

Waikato chefs have their say on the classic comfort food for this year's Meyer Cheese Melt Challenge.

* Commodity prices hitting record levels, expected to stay 'stronger for longer'

* People don't miss the sugar Fonterra's stopped adding to drinks and yoghurts

She wanted to know why a plentiful New Zealandmade dairy product was so expensive. Most cheese blocks were made by dairy company Fonterra.

“I’m really mad about it. I could afford to buy it at this price, but I refuse to when I know when I am being ripped off,” Martin said.

Mother-of-three, Nikita Clode, said she felt forced to buy cheese she did not really like because it was all she could afford, and even then she felt it was too expensive.

At Countdown the price per kilogram of Mainland tasty cheese is $10 more in a smaller block.

“I’ve had to get the cheapest brand lately as the Mainland tasty is now unaffordable, I am forced to buy cheese with less flavour,” Clode said.

“Actually, I feel it is outrageous to pay so much for a staple protein we eat daily.

“My kids love cheese but, I have had to cut it back and make it last longer or buy it fortnightly.”

Many of the tasty cheese blocks were marked ‘special’ this week.

Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy said signs promising discount deals were a regular feature in supermarket aisles.

“Retailers know shoppers are more likely to buy a product that’s marked at a ‘special’ price. But with discounts so pervasive in supermarkets, many consumers are asking whether they’re getting a real deal,” Duffy said.

Fonterra New Zealand brands managing director Brett Henshaw said the price of cheese on the world market had gone up, due to increased demand because of various Covid-19 lock-downs.

Henshaw said Global Dairy Trade (GDT) prices were a “strong factor” in determining the wholesale price of dairy products which companies, including Fonterra, bought to make consumer products such as Mainland cheese.

“When there is a sustained increase in GDT prices, we can reasonably expect that these will flow through to consumer prices eventually,” Henshaw said.

“There has been a significant increase in demand for cheese in New Zealand and globally, particularly since Covid-19 lock-downs, as people have been at home and cooking more. This has resulted in global prices for cheese increasing 15 per cent over the last year.

“While we held the retail cheese prices for most of the last year, from May 1 this year, we increased our price per block by an average by 6 per cent, or about 50 cents, to reflect some increase costs of cheese.”

Supermarkes offer a vast range of sizes, brands and prices of cheese, which can be confusing for shoppers.

The bigger the blocks were generally cheaper than smaller blocks this week, but the price per kilogram was much higher for the smaller blocks, according to supermarket online store pricing.

Henshaw said a range of sizes were offered to meet the “varying needs of New Zealand consumers”.

But Auckland University business school senior lecturer Dr Bodo Lang said when one retailer tested a product size change, and it worked, others quickly followed suit.

Research had shown that it was more successful for a manufacturer to reduce the size of a product and keep the price down, rather than increase the price of a larger item Lang said.

Shoppers were not discerning or particularly engaged when supermarket shopping, making these subtle changes fairly easy to make, he said.

“The huge range of products and the complexity of the price variation confuses the buyer who isn’t comparing the price per kilo and value for money but what they feel is a price they can afford.”

Lang said he would like to see regulatory changes that required supermarkets to be clearer about the price per kilogram of various size choices.

Countdown spokeswoman Nikhil Sawant said there were additional pressures on cheese prices. “including high commodity costs, strong international demand for dairy, rising labour costs and record-high farmgate milk prices”.