Focus: Hunt for the cheapest groceries

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With New Zealand in the thick of a cost-of-living crisis, there's been plenty of chat about food prices.

So when it comes to some of the essential grocery items, who's offering the best deal?

Focus visited two of the major stores, Pak'nSave and Countdown, before also checking out the Warehouse's grocery offering to compare prices.

Pak'nSave Wairau, as well as the other Foodstuffs-owned grocery stores, has recently rolled back the prices on more than 110 of the most shopped grocery items, which it estimates will save customers over half a million dollars each week.

Pak'nSave says it also has instore buyers whose job is to negotiate with suppliers and purchase goods for the store. Some of this buying is through Foodstuffs' supply network and some will be directly bought from suppliers to keep prices low.

Meanwhile, Countdown has temporarily frozen prices on 500 items. It identified a variety of winter staples and said whatever price they were as of May 9th, they would stay at that price for the winter months, no matter what happens with inflation.

And the Warehouse has dropped the everyday price on products like milk, butter and bread in response to the cost-of-living crisis.

Of the products Focus bought, which included staples like milk, butter, oats and rice, Pak'nSave came out on top with a total bill of $31.27. The same shop with similar products at Countdown cost $41.28.

The Warehouse totalled $30.54 without the addition of fresh produce but beat both Pak'nSave and Countdown when it came to the cost of butter and cheese.

It's also worth noting that due to the different brands offered at the stores, a direct comparison wasn't always possible.

Earlier in the week, the Herald looked at items and prices of a range of pantry essentials, to find out what's cheaper - from which supermarket, and where you can make the biggest savings.

Similarly, the items compared were typically lower value brands offered by the two big companies Countdown and Foodstuffs.

Most of the price reductions across Foodstuffs' supermarkets were across the Pams and Value ranges, on items such as meat, dairy, vegetables and personal care goods.

Cheese varied in price: $9.99 for the cheapest block under the Pams brand at New World, $7.90 at Countdown and $9.89 at Pak'nSave.

Cheree Kinnear hits the supermarkets for some price comparisons. Photo / Getty Images

A Countdown home-brand 500g block of salted butter was on sale for $5.80, while 1.5kg of plain flour was available for $2, and a 1.5kg bag of white sugar is $2.90.

At Pak'nSave, a 500g block of Pams salted butter was found for $4.95, 2.5kg of Pams plain flour is $3.29 and a 1.5kg bag of Pams white sugar is $2.45.

Retail analyst Chris Wilkinson said further increases to the cost of food were inevitable as the global economy and events such as lockdowns in China cause more shipping delays and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine pushing up the price of commodities such as wheat.

Food prices were also at the peril of demand and supply and while New Zealand produced more food than it was able to consume, the country was reliant on ingredients imported from offshore, driving up costs, along with the rising impact of seemingly ever-increasing fuel costs and overall shipping fees.