Pizza prices rose by just over 4 per cent in Ireland last year, a steep decline from 2022 when the Republic saw the biggest increase in shop-bought pie prices in the EU27.
Released to mark National Pizza Day in the US, new figures from EU statistics agency Eurostat reveal while pizzas and quiches were on average 5.9 per cent more expensive in December, 2023 than the previous year across the bloc, the rate of increase declined dramatically over the 12 months.
In the Republic, the price of a pizza or quiche bought in a supermarket increased by 4.1 per cent last year, down from a rate of more than 16 per cent throughout 2022 when the rate of increase here was steeper than in Italy, the dish’s home country.
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Irish pizza price inflation was slightly above the EU average of 15.9 per cent in 2022 but fell below that benchmark in the year to the end of December.
The most dramatic increases in the price of shop-bought pizzas last year were recorded in Hungary, where pie prices jumped 13.4 per cent, followed by Luxembourg, up 11.3 per cent, and Latvia, by 10.6 per cent throughout 2023.
“On the other end of the scale, in the Netherlands, a decline of 0.9 per cent was registered, while small increases were recorded in Denmark, up 0.6 per cent and Belgium 1 per cent,” Eurostat said.
The price of baked goods increased dramatically across the EU in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted flows of grain exports from the Black Sea to global markets. While grain prices softened in 2023, they remain higher than they were before the outset of the war and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The wholesale price of goods used in the making of flour and bran from cereals increased by 2.9 per cent in 2023, according to the Central Statistics Office’s latest wholesale price index, down from a rate of 11.2 per cent throughout 2022.
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