Higher food prices are ‘here to stay’, warns Sainsbury’s boss 

Food prices will not return to where they were before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the boss of Sainsbury’s has warned.

Chief executive Simon Roberts said a permanent rise in labour costs in stores and across the supply chain will keep prices higher on a permanent basis.

He said that while falls in commodity costs had driven recent price cuts in fresh food products, such as milk, butter, bread, pasta and rice, prices of packaged goods would be more stubborn.

‘We should just remember that energy costs are still high and labour costs have been elevated permanently,’ said Roberts.

‘We would expect inflation to continue to improve, but it’s not going to go back to where it was before because the cost of producing food is clearly elevated from where it was a year or two back.’ 

Sainsbury’s increased pay for its 127,000 hourly paid workers in February, taking the annual increase to 10 per cent.

Sue Davies, head of policy at consumer group Which?, said the warning from the boss of Britain’s second biggest supermarket was bad news for the millions struggling to put food on the table. 

Sainsbury’s yesterday revealed trading results suggesting it is on course to make underlying pre-tax profits of £700million this year.

 The figure would be on a par with last year, which suggests it has been able to protect profits while shoppers struggle to put food on the table.

The supermarket chain argued it is protecting customers by investing more than £60million in price cuts on more than 120 essentials such as bread and toilet rolls.