Food prices increased by 4% in the 12 months to December 2025, down from a 4.4% increase in the 12 months to November.<\/p>\n
According to Stats NZ figures out today, higher prices for the grocery food group, up 4.6%, contributed the most to the annual increase.<\/p>\n
This was followed by 7.4% increase in the cost of meat, poultry, and fish.<\/p>\n
Milk was up 15.8% ($4.92 per 2 litres) and a kg of porterhouse steak was up 21.7%. White bread was up 58.3% annually \u2013 averaging $2.20 per 600g.<\/p>\n
In better news, the price of olive oil has declined since March 2025. Back then, a litre set shoppers back $22.79. In December it cost $17.45, a 23.4% fall.<\/p>\n
There was good news too for salad lovers, said prices and deflators spokesperson Nicola Growden.<\/p>\n
\u201cSalad season was cheaper in December 2025 as prices for vegetables such as lettuce, cucumber, and avocado were all down as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Monthly food prices down 0.3% in December<\/p>\n
Cheaper non-alcoholic beverages led this trend (down 2.1% in a month), followed by meat, poultry, and fish, (down 0.9%). Fruit and vegetables went up 1.8%.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Sunday roast lamb was cheaper for the month of December,\u201d Growden said. It was down 27.4%<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the prices of vegetables that typically accompany roast lamb, such as onions, carrots, broccoli, and potatoes, increased.\u201d<\/p>\n
Onions saw a 38.2% monthly price bump to $2.28 per kilogram.<\/p>\n
Electricity and gas prices weren\u2019t helping households either, with respective monthly increases of 1.5% and 1.9%. Annual increases were 12.2% and 17.5% respectively to December 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe price for powering a household continues to increase both monthly and annually. Since December 2021, electricity prices have risen by 27.3 percent, while gas has risen by 56.0 percent,\u201d Growden said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Food prices increased by 4% in the 12 months to December 2025, down from a 4.4% increase in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,144,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-235879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-food-drink","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}