Loblaw says it’s ending a three-month price freeze on its No Name brand products while pledging to keep prices from increasing on the yellow-label items “wherever possible.”
“The more than three-month price freeze ends January 31—but we’re not done,” a Loblaw spokesperson told CTV News on Jan. 30. “Looking ahead, we’ll continue to hold those prices flat wherever possible.”
The price freeze on over 1,500 No Name brand grocery and household products was introduced last October amid rapidly rising food prices. At the time, Loblaw chairman and president Galen G. Weston said in a letter to customers that the price of an average basket of groceries shot up by about 10 percent, something he said was much out of Loblaw’s control.
Weston attributed the food price increase to suppliers passing their higher costs on to Loblaw. But he noted that while the company pushed back against some increases, food suppliers at the time were also facing cost increases as Canada’s average inflation rate hit a 40-year high of 6.8 percent. Prices went up for everything from raw materials to energy and transportation.
Statistics Canada said in January that Canada’s annual inflation rate slowed to 6.3 percent in December 2022, but food prices remained high. Grocery prices were up 11 percent on an annual basis, a slight improvement from 11.4 percent in November 2022, the agency said.
Loblaw also pointed to the ongoing impact of food price inflation, saying that it is costing more for the company to stock shelves, CTV News reported.
Canada’s grocery chains came under fire last year for making steady profits amid high inflation, which also prompted the House committee on agriculture to announce plans to investigate food prices and alleged abuse by large grocery chains in October 2022. The third-quarter profits at Loblaw Companies Ltd. grew by nearly 30 percent compared to a year ago, CTV News reported.
