Supermarket giants slash prices on hundreds of summer essentials just in time for Christmas

It appears that Christmas has come early for prudent shoppers who love a good summer barbecue. Supermarket giant Woolworths has announced that they will be slashing prices on staple items across the board for the upcoming holiday season.

After years of rising grocery prices amidst the cost of living crisis, something like this almost sounds like a Christmas miracle! Prices will be dropped on 400 items across the Woolies product range.

Salad kits, seafood and a range of meat and poultry products often served at summer barbecues have all had their prices slashed. There are also discounts on several pantry staples like sauces, snacks, and kids yoghurts, as well as everyday household cleaning supplies and personal care items.

Sausages were the star of the show here. Woolworths has dropped the price of its 600g sausage range by almost 30 per cent, from $7 to $5 per pack, which is the lowest price they’ve been since 2019.

Examples of other items seeing significant discounts include Inghams Chicken Wing Nibbles, mini tomatoes, corn cobettes, green beanettes, and Pepsi Max. Overall, the total savings across the basket of discounted products is $620, or an average of 18 per cent less.

These lowered prices will stay locked until February 27, 2024. When it comes to groceries, discounts like that haven’t been seen in quite a long time. But that’s not all.

Prices have continued to fall on fruits and vegetables after last year’s floods caused widespread supply issues. According to Woolworths, prices on some individual fruits and vegetables are down by more than 40 per cent compared to last year. Vegetables overall are about 13 per cent cheaper.

Highlights for vegetables include tomatoes, sweetcorn, and capsicums, which are all purportedly down by 20 per cent  on average compared to last year. When it comes to fruits, blueberries and avocados as a whole are down an average 35 per cent compared to last year.

“As the weather warms up we know these are some of the products that customers are buying more of, so we want to help them spend less on these seasonal staples,” said Natalie Davis, the Managing Director of Woolworths Supermarkets.

“Our Woolworths own brand products also continue to offer delicious and affordable options for our customers, while thousands of weekly specials will continue to run,” she added.

Not to be outdone, Coles have also announced that they will be dropping prices on many of their own products. Speaking to Yahoo Finance, Coles said it would also drop the price of their 550g pack of sausages from to $4.50 and 560g of Simply sausages to $4.60. These prices will only stay down until January 2, 2024 at the moment however.

Coles also said that their own fruit and vegetables had experienced a price drop. Corn is down by 37 per cent, capsicum and zucchini are both down by 30 per cent, and eggplant is down by 20 per cent. Stonefruits are down by 10 per cent, avocados are down by 40 per cent, and melons are down by 15 per cent.

With inflation still on the rise, it can only be hoped that the prices of necessities like these will continue to fall in order to ease pressure on pensioners and other groups who have been hard-hit.