Butter prices slipping out of reach
Monday, 24 June 2024
Whether you’re measuring it for baking, using it in cooking or spreading it on your toast, butter is a versatile but increasingly expensive household item.
In a non-scientific survey, Stuff has found in recent months the price of the golden goodness has increased - not just for our own kitchens but for food vendors also.
Looking at the 500gram salted and unsalted butter slabs from Mainland, Anchor, Westland and Rolling Meadow the rounded average price from Pak’nSave, Woolworths and New World supermarkets was $7.30.
The most expensive 500 grams of butter we found was Mainland Semi-Soft spreadable butter for a whopping $13.29 ($11.89 with a club card) online at New World.
Margarine or butter?
Firstly let’s get our facts straight, we’re talking about real butter here not a container of margarine.
Margarine, or fake butter as it can be known, is more manufactured and usually made of plant-based oil (like sunflower, canola or olive oils), an emulsifier like lecithin (made from soybeans) and some salt to preserve it.
Real butter is made from just two ingredients - cream/milk and salt.
Butter price breakdown
Looking at the main contenders, the price of butter depends on where you do your supermarket shopping.
Narrowing it down to a 500 gram block of butter salted and unsalted, the second dearest butter brand Rolling Meadow, was on the shelves at Porirua New World in 2022 for a full price of $7.99.
Now it costs $8.79 on New World’s online store. That’s an 80 cent increase in two years.
The price range for the standard slab of butter between Woolworths, Pak’nSave and New World varied between $5.49 and $13.29.
How are butter prices affecting our food vendors?
Chef and owner of restaurants Story and Odeon in Christchurch, Shareef Ismail said for the last six months he had been going out and bulk buying butter from supermarkets instead of from suppliers.
“From comparison the price of butter is close to 40% up approximately in the last three years. It used to be a block of butter for $4.90 to $5.20 so that is what we would get it from the suppliers but now supply has an extra margin on it.
“So now what we’re doing is going directly to the supermarket and buying boxes of it because that is cheaper for us. I just keep an eye for the butter on special.”
Ismail said they buy bulk boxes that contain around 20 blocks of butter each because “it’s cheaper by $35” compared to the suppliers price.
“That $35 will buy us about six more blocks of butter.”
Is cheap butter even a thing anymore?
Home brand butter still remains on the cheaper side of selection.
Foodstuff’s Pams Pure Butter and Woolworths Butter Salted were the best bang for your buck at $5.69, or you could go 20 cents cheaper at Pak’nSave.
What’s with the increase?
Butter was the biggest mover at the latest Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction, lifting 10.3% to US$6516 (NZ$10656) a tonne, the highest it had climbed since early 2022.
By February this year butter prices had risen sharply, jumping 34% since December, and was closing in on the five-year high of US$7086 (NZ$11,547) per tonne recorded in March 2022.
In May 2022, retail prices for a 500 gram block of butter were as high as $7.99.
ANZ agricultural economist Susan Kilsby told Stuff in February that supermarket chains tended to have ‘contracts in place for the supply of dairy products’.
“So there does tend to be a lag in the change in global prices relative to domestic prices and domestic prices only change when contracts are renegotiated.”
A Foodstuffs spokesperson said their retail pricing for butter was driven by “market and wholesale pricing from suppliers”.
“In the last quarter, global commodity costs for butter in the Global Dairy Trade were up by more than 30 per cent, impacting the price of what we’re seeing on our store shelves.”
Are there any other everyday household items that have become out of reach for you? Let us know in the comments.