Amidst claims that supermarkets are shrinking strawberry punnets in order to manage rapidly rising costs, a leading British strawberry grower has stated that shops have threatened to cut orders and argued that many are intentionally reducing pack sizes to avoid hitting shoppers with price rises.
Annabel Makin-Jones, a Yorkshire-based farmer whose strawberries have been stocked in Ocado, Booths, and Harrods, said supermarkets have threatened to take fewer strawberries than initially agreed due to their own higher costs.
Ms. Makin-Jones said: "What they do is they make the pack size smaller because they don't want to break a price barrier, or they'll start selling strawberries at two packs for £4.50 when actually a bigger pack [with the same volume] would have been £4. The customer would think they're getting more for their money, but they're not."
British shoppers buy around 87,000 tons of homegrown strawberries each year, with the UK season officially beginning on May 1. Industry experts said there was a seasonal difference in pack sizes, with larger punnets coming back into stock once the British growing season starts.
Source: fpcfreshtalkdaily.co.uk