Countdown Bucks Inflation With The Price Of More Than 500 Essentials Frozen For Winter

6 May 2022: From Monday, 9 May, Countdown is freezing the price of more than 500 essential products to help give New Zealanders more certainty on food prices as the country moves into winter.

Countdown customers will find staples such as diced tomatoes, butter, cheese, sugar, flour, shaved ham, hot roast chicken, carrots and pumpkin at the same low price all through the colder months, no matter what happens with inflation and costs.

Spencer Sonn, Countdown’s Managing Director, says the move aims to buck the current inflationary environment where the company is receiving millions of dollars of cost increase requests every month from suppliers who are facing higher fuel, raw material and freight costs.

“As we head into the chillier months, the cost of living is undeniably top of everyone’s minds,” says Spencer Sonn. “We want to help Kiwis’ money go further despite the pressures everyone is facing with increasing costs, and that’s why we’ve pledged that the price of these 500-plus essentials won’t change,” he says.

In the last ten months, Countdown has received close to 1,000 cost increase requests from its suppliers, more than double the same period the year before. The average increase requested is just over 9 per cent as a result of suppliers’ own costs of raw products, fuel, fertiliser, grains and import costs also increasing.

“There are so many factors impacting food prices at the moment and every week we’re working with suppliers to help offset cost increases as much as possible so that our customers aren’t impacted. But the reality is that we are all impacted by the current environment,” says Spencer Sonn.

“Every week we’ll also still have more than 5,000 specials and discounts across our stores and online, as well as more than 3,000 products on Great Price for even more certainty. But on these Great Price Winter Freeze products, we’ve pledged that they can’t be touched by inflation this winter and we hope this helps with planning in these uncertain times.

“At Countdown we are deeply committed to making Kiwis’ lives a little better every day, and our customers can be sure of our commitment to continue to work hard to do so,” says Spencer Sonn.

The full Great Price Winter Freeze range can be found online here.

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