NEWS
4 ASIAN TRADER 24 JANUARY 2025
An upcoming “grocery tax”
could hit hard-pressed Britons
in the pocket, adding £56
annually to household shopping
bills and costing families a total
of £1.4 billion.
Extended Producer Respon-
sibility (EPR), will impose a levy
on retailers and manufacturers
for the cost of collecting and
disposing of packaging waste,
currently funded via council
tax.
The Department for
Environment, Food and Rural
Afairs (Defra) has published a
series of “base fees” to indicate
how much food manufacturers
and retailers will be charged
under the scheme when it starts
next autumn.
The highest fee of £485/
tonne will be charged for plastic
packaging followed by “fi-
bre-based composite” at £455/
tonne. The levy for paper or
board packaging is £215 while
materials such as bamboo or
hemp will be charged at £280.
The government estimates
the policy will drive up prices by
between £28 and £56 a year for
the average household, adding
0.07% to inflation as retailers
pass on most of the costs to
shoppers.
‘Grocery tax’ to add
£56 to food bills
Leaning hard into crime
oodness knows, if we wanted to (we don’t), this
entire magazine could be filled with news stories
about crime in the retail sector – which dispropor-
tionately appears to afict the convenience channel, for
obvious reasons: smaller stores with less security, often staf
alone at the till, perhaps isolated and quiet locations, and val-
uable goods to hand – basically free to any shoplifter if less
than £200 in total value, because mostly the police won’t get
out of bed for less than that.
Of course, the temptation isn’t all about bottles of wine
and beefsteaks. Shop staf at a Willenhall c-store were
recently held up by desperate knife-wielding robbers who
were out to steal ... cheese and butter. That really gives a fresh
definition to the phrases “impulse purchase” and “distress
mission (“Quick, we need butter before the toast goes cold –
get a move on!”). It might seem a pathetic example of
criminal losers, but it was certainly no joke for the terrified
staf. It is not teenage runaways, either – the culprits were a
man of 36 and a woman five years older.
Not long afterwards, storeowner Ian Lewis of Witney in
Oxfordshire was ram-raided and deprived of an ATM by five
burglars who dragged it the length of his shop behind a
truck, wrecking the premises in the process – and this was
the second time in just three months that such outsize cash
withdrawals from Ian’s SPAR had been attempted. Inciden-
tally, the police quickly “closed the case” on the previous
(unsuccessful) attempt, which perhaps emboldened the
thieves the next time around.
The point is that crime is now out of control. Criminals
clearly have no fear because they know that punishment for
their crimes is vanishingly unlikely, and this makes robbery
a profitable living. The butter burglars might not be in the
same class as the cash-machine villains, but a confluence of
economic hardship and fearless arrogance has emboldened
the criminal population to the extent that every store is now
a permanent target, and it is high time something was done.
Last year Asian Trader campaigned against the Tobacco
and Vapes Bill, which we thought ill-drafted, ideological and
unworkable in many respects – and also likely to cause
trouble for storeowners. The Bill went through as predicted,
but at least we and a number of other groups and voices
brought attention to the issue. We also tried to make a noise
about the Horizon scandal, highlighting the terrible injus-
tice the victims had sufered and supporting them and their
champions, such as journalist Nick Wallis, as best we could.
The 2024 Editor’s Award at the Asian Trader Awards went to
the subpostmasters, and several were recognised subse-
quently in the New Year’s Honours list, including Seema
Misra, a great friend of the magazine.
This year we are going to be shouting about crime and
sticking up for the hard-pressed storeowners and staf who
are consistently and outrageously ill-served by the law:
lawbreakers need to re-learn the consequences of their
actions. And we’ll also be speaking up for good old-fash-
ioned cash.
More businesses are expecting
to raise prices while fewer firms
have increased investment
plans, shows a recent survey
reflecting the sentiment among
businesses regarding upcoming
changes this year.
In the largest poll of business
sentiment since October’s
Budget, the BCC’s Quarterly
Economic Survey, shows
concern about tax, including
national insurance, has spiked.
Following the Chancellor’s
autumn statement, 63% of firms
cited it as a worry (compared
with 48% in Q3), the highest
level on record. Concern about
inflation and interest rates
remains at similar levels to Q3.
Business confidence has
declined significantly with just
49% of responding companies
expecting their turnover to
increase over the next twelve
months (compared with 56 % in
Q3). Confidence levels are lowest
in the retail and hospitality sectors
(39% and 42% respectively).
The data from over 4,800
businesses across the UK (91% of
whom are SMEs – fewer than
250 employees) also shows that
the majority of firms are
expecting to raise prices.
Following the Budget,
concern about taxation is now
cited by 63% of responding firms,
up from 48% in Q3. This is the
highest level of tax concern since
2017. The levels in certain
sectors are higher, with 72% of
production and manufacturing
firms, and 68% of construction
and engineering businesses
raising tax as a concern.
“Firms are telling us the
national insurance hike is
particularly damaging. Busi-
nesses are already cutting back
on investment and say they will
have to put up prices,” said
Shevaun Haviland, Director
General of the British Chambers
of Commerce.
Post-budget low-growth blues extend into 2025
Businesses to raise prices
Businesses to raise prices
as confidence dips
as confidence dips