There’s a price war raging in pouched rice, says Kantar Worldpanel analyst William Sohler, pointing to the 47% of value sales in the sector that are on promotion, versus the 35% average across the wider rice & noodles sector.

“Prices have progressively dropped over the past five years as more own-label SKUs have flooded the market, while Uncle Ben’s and Tilda have been fighting a price war,” he says. “Highlighting the threat of own label is the fact that over £5m of spend has switched from branded ranges to own-label offerings in the past year.”

Of course, the rise of own label isn’t all down to the growing shelf space the big four are allocating their own products. The respective 26.7% and 30% growth of the own label-reliant discounters Aldi and Lidl is also driving this trend.

All this has driven average prices down by 1.8% in the past year, according to Kantar’s analysis. “This goes against the overall trend in grocery, which sees price inflation affecting most other categories,” says Sohler.

Own-label ready-to-heat rice has made strong gains in the past year, but not at the expense of the market’s two biggest brands, Uncle Ben’s and Tilda, which have put an extra £2.8m and £1.5m through the tills respectively.

Nielsen senior client manager Beatriz Morgado says this has been helped by the brands dabling in “classic and trendy flavours and mix of grains”

But they’re not ignoring their core offerings. Both Tilda and Uncle Ben’s say maintaining their bestsellers is a key concern.

The more than 2% fall in average price across many of the big brands is typical for the sector, and represents their growing reliance on promotions to compete with own label. “We are promoting across all of our core SKUs,” says Uncle Ben’s marketing manager Nadia Follon.