Are Irish groceries about to get more expensive, yet again?
In its quarterly economic commentary earlier this week , the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) highlighted the State’s reliance on imported food, meaning that “global food price shocks can be expected to pass through meaningfully to Irish consumer prices”.
But what could trigger “a global food price shock” and how might that affect Irish shoppers?
Thia Hennessy, professor of agri-food economics at University College Cork, says we should think about weather and energy.
“What we can expect to see as we move into autumn 2026 is higher food prices across the board because of the ongoing energy crisis and because of extreme weather events over the summer.”
Hennessy says there are three areas where Irish consumers are likely to face cost increases but holds out hope of lower prices for a fourth.
Hennessy points particularly to fresh fruit and vegetables produced in the Mediterranean region, such as in Spain, France and Italy. Together, these three countries accounted for 55 per cent of the total harvest of fruit and vegetables in the European Union in 2024, according to Eurostat.
After a poor harvest as a result of extreme heat, drought and wildfires across Europe this summer, production is down.
“They have all been badly hit by the long, dry summer and yields are down so we would expect prices to increase,” says Hennessy.
Continuing conflict in the Middle East has led to higher energy prices which, in turn, have driven up the cost of fertiliser production, an energy-intensive process. In addition to this, the transportation of fertilisers has been disrupted because the Strait of Hormuz is a key transport route for the shipment of fertilisers globally. Taken together, this all means the cost of producing wheat has soared.
“We can expect to see the cost of producing bread and pasta to increase and the consumer price to increase,” says Hennessy.
It is not all doom and gloom in the supermarket basket, as one household staple is expected to reduce in price in the coming months, according to Hennessy.
“On a more positive note, we can expect coffee prices start to decline this autumn after a period of very high coffee prices over the last two years because of harvest problems. We had a very good harvest of coffee in Brazil and Vietnam this year, the major exporting countries, so we can expect prices to fall,” she says.