The price of butter

W11girl that's a typical selling trick - an item has to have been a certain price for so many days (don't know how many) before they can promote is as 'reduced'.

So if they double the price they can then later reduce it and boast '50%' reduction which is an eye-catcher and to which we're all susceptible!

UK butter is normally sold in blocks of 250g - so half the siz of NZ blocks.

OMG you don't know how lucky you are!
New Zealand, dairy suppliers to the world, and we pay $8.40 for a 500gm block (1 nz dollar=53p) A tub of semi-soft is $8.70. The supermarkets think tgey are being generous putting it on special for $8. Global price of milk powder increases...our dairy prices increase and we are told we have to pay market rates?

noticed price hike in butter a while ago so buy my favorite Anchor (in the block form) in bulk when I see it cheap, I
remember my father saying when we entered the common market we wouldn't be able to get Anchor any longer as it came from New Zealand, he was wrong there ..or was he?
just noticed Anchor , along with its new packaging tells you its made in the UK, must admit my taste buds have gone up the swanny lately but really thought I could tell Anchor butter from a cheaper version, seems I might as well have bought the cheaper stuff all along, bit like falling for the Kellogs ad for ORIGINAL special k, still taste like the sad replacement.... hard and oversweet

Watch out for coffee too. Going manic. I've stockpiled before my source does the same.

With the high cost of butter here, I only buy it for the Christmas shortbread bake. Am sure, soon enough, that it will be sold in downsized packets like coffee, bacon and other items.

I think the price rise is something to do with the squeeze large supermarkets put on the dairy farmers which forced some of them out of business and created a shortage. Less butter means higher prices. The exchange rate movements of late would mean that we couldn't buy butter from alternative sources so cheaply abroad either.

I am still buying three packets a week as I make a lot of cakes.

Talking of price hikes...I went into Asda a month ago to buy my usual Glade perfumed candle, which is £2.00. They had risen the price to £5.00. Knowing that I could get the same thing from any other supermarket for £2.00. I took the item to the cashier and asked her to check the price..indeed it was £5.00, a £3.00 uplift in one go! Naturally I put it back and went to Morrisons and got it for the normal £2.00. I was in Asda yesterday and took a look at the current price, it was on offer for £2.50! What's going on! Supermarkets really do try to take the 'p', therefore I am not loyal to any of them!

I stopped eating butter (and cream, and cut down on cheese) 11 years ago after a heart attack. At the time this was advised - cholesterol - but I think medical advice has changed since then .

The video clearly shows workers grabbing dollops of cream and jam slapping it onto cooked cake bases with bare hands YUK! Who knows if hand washing is careful or carried out at all I won't be buying cakes from that very large bakery factory that supplies lots of supermarkets .
It wasn't about the cakes being handmade but the bare hands being used.

Wow, here in Canada the best butter is about $5.00 per pound. Send cheaper butter here please.

Love butter, detest all the substitutes, wonderful for cooking. I have door step milk too, and buy two pints of Jersey Milk per week, please try it, that third of rich cream on top is such a treat, think it is 64p per pint, the other delivered is semi skimmed. So will continue to buy proper real butter whether cow's or goat's, regardless of the rise. Before you all descend on me am dress size 12. A little of what you fancy enables your soul to fly and does you good.

ps similar point to 2 other Grans above.

I never buy butter, unless we have people to stay.For baking I use soft marg. or sunflower oil.
I've just googled Waitrose Lurpack and it's £7.50 & kilo
Dairy farmers here have been protesting about the fixed low price of milk, so perhaps they're getting their costs back from butter?

I often make cakes by hand ,I made christmas pudding for a couple of hundred people by hand in a (new) metal bin a few years ago...I also buy direct from the farmer when possible,,milk is delivered to my doorstep and if he supplied butter and cheese I'd buy that too, until recently they would deliver bacon and sausage and morning rolls but there weren't enough customers to justify then doing it.It would need a change of habit for people to go back to local suppliers though I believe it would benefit us all

I've noticed butter going up again in price and in fact there have been gaps on the shelf in my local supermarket for British butter.

That film was very interesting and I'm not really surprised that cream has gone up in price. I've often wondered how four pints of milk can possibly be sold for £1 and yet produce a profit to both farmer & supermarket.

As they say, with cheap food, the consumer may not be paying the price but someone along the line will be.

Yy, to the bare-hands cake production! Mixing a cake would be ok, as it's then going to be cooked but the filling?

I'm sure the price is rising but I don't but a lot of butter. As for mixing cakes by hand, my MIL came from a large northern family of bakers and was a really superb cake maker - she always mixed her cakes with her hands and DH was very surprised when we were first married that I didn't- He thought it was the norm! Alas, I don't have her skills and, after 36 years of baking cakes, I have today made the worst one ever, total collapse, it looks dreadful! Tastes ok though!!

Allegedly, China is buying it all up. I've no idea if this is correct.
cupcake

My relatives in the U.S inform they too have increases in their dairy lines and many other products too. So brexit bashers put your thinking caps on. What is or who is responsible.
Hands up who say it has to be Mr Trump?

We always have goat butter. More expensive at £1.90 a pack, but so much nicer than butter from cows milk. It's lighter than cow milk butter which, in comparison, tastes 'lardy '. A downside is that only the bigger supermarkets sell it. Don't think there will be a shortage in the dairy goat business. We have goat milk too. Apparently the molecules of fat in goat milk, butter etc are smaller than those in cow milk products and easier for your body to digest. It always used to be recommended for eczema sufferers too, before the advent of soya and almond milk.

Am I missing something. Where could you buy a pound of butter for less than £1 a few months ago? Those small packs weigh 250 grams (which weigh just over 8 oz). I paid £1.40 for a 250 gram pack of Sainsbury's own brand English unsalted butter last week, making it about £2.80 for just over one pound weight. The cost has definitely gone up. The cost of many food products is creeping up, I think we will just have to get used to it.

As Minniesmum says, it's nothing to do with Brexit - it really is paneuropean and Aldi and Lidl started the headlines here because they put their butter prices up last week.

It's not as if it's something big which has increased in price at this rate, but it will make a big difference to the less well off, if they use butter. Lots of people use margarine - that may well follow.

Estimating percentages. According to google
If we are trying to find n percent of x, we can estimate this percent using the following steps:
Round both n and x up or down to numbers that are easy to work with.
Multiply the rounded numbers together.
Divide the result by 100.

(£1000 x £3000) / 100 = 30

so it would seem that this increase is 30% I am not happy with this but do not have time to work out the reason.

However wikipedia says

Percentage increase and decrease[edit]
Due to inconsistent usage, it is not always clear from the context what a percentage is relative to. When speaking of a "10% rise" or a "10% fall" in a quantity, the usual interpretation is that this is relative to the initial value of that quantity. For example, if an item is initially priced at $200 and the price rises 10% (an increase of $20), the new price will be $220. Note that this final price is 110% of the initial price (100% + 10% = 110%).

Some other examples of percent changes:

An increase of 100% in a quantity means that the final amount is 200% of the initial amount (100% of initial + 100% of increase = 200% of initial); in other words, the quantity has doubled.
An increase of 800% means the final amount is 9 times the original (100% + 800% = 900% = 9 times as large).
A decrease of 60% means the final amount is 40% of the original (100% – 60% = 40%).
A decrease of 100% means the final amount is zero (100% – 100% = 0%).
In general, a change of x percent in a quantity results in a final amount that is 100 + x percent of the original amount (equivalently, 1 + 0.01x times the original amount).

Clearly all very interesting. I would consider however that percentages are to do with an increase in fractions of the whole and that when the price triples we just say so. And all this goes to show how easy it is to misuse arithmetic.

My friend in Germany says it is happening there and also another friend resident in Spain is also complaining.
As far as the UK is concerned, I live in a rural area and cows have practically disappeared as the supermarkets (and us!) will not pay a decent price for dairy goods. My cousin is a farmer in Gloucestershire and he gave up dairy two years ago and now sticks to cereals on the flat and sheep on the hills. He keeps a couple of Jersey cows for milk and butter for the family but it is not good commercial practice any more unless people are prepared to pay a little more. Someone has to get up at 5 am to milk the cows and if there isn't even a tiny bit of profit in it to pay for wages and upkeep of machinery not to mention vet bills, then it is not worth doing. The supermarkets and the EU have a lot to answer for.

I try to buy locaĺy produced and organic in order to support local farmers who cannot make a living otherwise. One of our friends pays his dairyman weekly more than he is able to give his wife monthly for their own necessities. There are clearly things which are very wrong. We will all end up going back to bartering at this rate especially if 'they' push through this 'cashless society' idea where everything is electronic so that we can be milched whenever deemed necessary.