Asda shopper cereal basket

Asda was more than a fiver cheaper than its rivals this week – but not enough to stop it being undercut by Sainsbury’s loyalty card prices once again.

At £62.10, Asda was £5.17 cheaper than Morrisons as it offered the lowest price for 23 items and was exclusively cheapest for 10 products. These included the avocados, Flora and Innocent apple juice.

Morrisons was cheapest for 14 items, and exclusively so for four: the Andrex toilet wipes, Batchelors Super noodles, Dr Oetker pizza and the Urban Fruit dried pineapple.

Tesco came in £6.39 more expensive than Asda at £68.49. Its Clubcard Prices deals closed the gap considerably. However, the £6.05 discount for loyalty card holders would still have left Tesco 34p more expensive than its Leeds-based rival.

There were even bigger discounts to be had at Sainsbury’s for Nectar members. Despite its shelf-edge prices coming in £6.87 more expensive than Asda. Sainsbury’s was offering Nectar Prices deals worth £8.12. This was enough to undercut Asda by £1.25.

Waitrose was exclusively cheapest for the baking potatoes and the brie this week. However, overall it was £11.74 more expensive than Asda.

Across all five retailers, a third of the items on our list were on deal. This helped limit annual inflation on this basket to just 5.9%, though prices were also up 1.2% on October.

Just two items were up by more than 30% – the spuds and the Haribo (see right). Only four more were up by at least 20% year on year – the Dolmio, CARR’s crackers, the brie and Urban Fruit pineapple.

In contrast, nine items were cheaper year on year. These included the lasagne sheets, 13% cheaper year on year, and the Flora, down 6%. A further nine items increased in price by less than 10%.