The latest grocery market data from Kantar shows that grocery price inflation quickened to 4.91% in the 12 weeks to the end of April, some 2.52 percentage points higher than the rate seen a year ago.

While grocery inflation remains far below the levels seen in the wake of the pandemic, business development director at Kantar Emer Healy said: “Retailers need to demonstrate clear value to customers, but it’s a tricky balance as they are trying to manage their own rising business costs.”

Kantar’s inflation measure is calculated from 30,000 products compared year on year.

Shopping behaviour is held constant across the comparison periods, meaning that individual consumers can lower their personal inflation rate by trading down to own-label products or buying groceries on promotion.

Leaders

The data from Kantar so far shows little sign of that happening, with growth in both branded and premium label products faster than sales growth in the grocery sector as a whole. Branded products held 47.7% of the market during the last 12 weeks.

Looking at the leading retailers, Dunnes retained its position at the top with 24.1% of the market, with Tesco in second place at 23.4%.

Supervalu was 20.3%, Lidl was at 13.4% and Aldi 11.5%.

The report covers the Easter period, where consumers spent an extra €2.5m on hot cross buns and lamb.

There were also sales increases for alcoholic beverages and €15.2m more spent on seasonal confectionary, including Easter eggs.

Kantar noted that the fine weather in April had also seen the start of barbecue shopping, with extra spending on sausages, coleslaw and potato salad during the month.