Dairy and veg prices fall at Foodstuffs stores
Shoppers paid less at the checkout for cheese, butter and ice cream at Foodstuff stores in December and many vegetables were down more than 30%.
Meat and dairy boosted the total volume of manufacturing sales to its strongest quarterly rise in six years, Stats NZ said today.
The volume of total manufacturing sales rose 2.7% in the December 2019 quarter, after a flat September 2019 quarter, when adjusted for seasonal effects.
The growth was led by a 7.9% lift in meat and dairy products manufacturing sales, following falls in the two previous quarters.
“This quarter’s rise is the largest increase in total manufacturing sales volumes in six years,” says business statistics manager Geraldine Duoba.
“It coincided with high exports seen for meat and dairy products late in 2019, before the outbreak of coronavirus in China.”
Manufacturing sales values rise 2.4%
In current prices, sales values for the December 2019 quarter rose 2.4% ($706 million) compared with the September 2019 quarter. Seasonally adjusted total manufacturing sales were worth $29.5 billion in the December quarter.
Meat and dairy product manufacturing sales values rose 7.4% ($649 million), to $9.5 billion in the December quarter.
With price effects included, the unadjusted value of manufacturing sales was $31.7 billion in the December quarter, up $1.2 billion from the December 2018 quarter.
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