Iceland fresh milk changed from 4 pint to 2 litre carton

Mum161111

Does anyone know why Iceland milk is now in  2 litre cartons instead of 4pints?  (My arithmetic is not good but it looks as if 2 litres at £1.35 is cheaper than 4 pints at £1.45)

Maybe it is a reduced price for a short time but I did not notice the difference until I got home and noticed the smaller amount of milk.

Cloth_of_Gold

A pint is 568 ml so 4 pints is 2272 ml and 2 litres is, of course, 2000 ml. 135/2000 = 0.0675 whereas 145/2272 =0.0638 so the 2 litres is about 5.8% more expensive per ml.

Mum161111

That's really helpful to know. My poor arithmetic - I thought the price had gone down, not up.

There was nothing I noticed to indicate this price increase.  If the price of 4 pint cartons had gone up it would have been easier to notice.

Thanks Cloth_of_Gold.

jackieblack

It’s called shrinkflation and has become common practice over the past few years as a (some say sneaky) alternative to raising prices 

alinkliter

As has been said, shrinkflation. 4 pints is just over 12% more than 2 litres so works out about to the equivalent of paying £1.51 for 4 pints. Although when I went to Iceland yesterday I noticed the price on the shelf was still £1.45 despite it containing 2 litre cartons. Presumably this would be rectified at the checkout.

pumpkin89

In fairness to Iceland, this could be a win-win for their business and shoppers.

According to Wrap (page 16), milk is one of the most wasted foods in UK households.   So it's likely many people are throwing away the final bit from the bottle, and would be better off saving 10p albeit at a higher pro-rata price.

HillStreetBlues

pumpkin89 said:

In fairness to Iceland, this could be a win-win for their business and shoppers.

According to Wrap (page 16), milk is one of the most wasted foods in UK households.   So it's likely many people are throwing away the final bit from the bottle, and would be better off saving 10p albeit at a higher pro-rata price.

Would be better to reduce the cost of the 2 pint bottle (1 litre)
Iceland it now works out 38p a pint for a 2 litre bottle but 67p a pint for a litre bottle.

Cloth_of_Gold

Mum161111 said:

That's really helpful to know. My poor arithmetic - I thought the price had gone down, not up.

There was nothing I noticed to indicate this price increase.  If the price of 4 pint cartons had gone up it would have been easier to notice.

Thanks Cloth-ofGold.

You're welcome.  

As others have said, it's shrinkflation. I've  noticed it particularly on bags of ground coffee, most of which used to be 250g. Most are now 227g and quite a few now only 200g, but I haven't noticed the price going down!

Mum161111

It's not always easy to shop around but I use quite a lot of milk.  I never waste milk and the carton does not last long enoigh to go sour.  I think Morrison's is £1.44 for 4 pints so, for now anyway, that is cheaper than Iceland's £1.35 for 2 litres - I know thank you to Cloth_of_Gold.

MrsStepford

Britain formally adopted metrication in 1967. Metrication has been fudged. In 2015, 60% of under 24s didn't know their weight in kilos. So yay for Iceland, finally going metric.

MattMattMattUK

MrsStepford said:

Britain formally adopted metrication in 1967. Metrication has been fudged. In 2015, 60% of under 24s didn't know their weight in kilos. So yay for Iceland, finally going metric.

It is slightly odd, but the way people use weight depends on context. For example most people measure length in mm/cm/meters, but height is done in feet and inches because people know what 6ft looks like as a person and road speed and distance is in miles because it was annoyingly never changed over. Weight for almost everything is in KG, but if I was talking to most people outside of a health professional context I would tell them in stone and pounds because they cannot visualise people in KG, the same with babies, we are told their weight in pounds and ounces because we can understand what size an 8lb baby is but most people would not have an idea what a 3.6kg baby looked like. The old Imperial stuff hangs about not as an objective way of measuring things, but as a subjective way of feeling the size of things, though personally I wish it would die entirely, even more so when having to deal with American's who cannot understand metric, get their dates the wrong way around and give things weird names.