Aldi has pledged to keep its own-brand baby formula at £6.99 a tin for ‘at least’ the rest of the year.
The supermarket made headlines last year after cutting the price within 48 hours of Iceland announcing its own plans to make milk more affordable for parents.
Their Mamia milk is now even cheaper, and they say it is £5 less than the average sold elsewhere.
Infant formula is required by law to meet the same standards, so all brands will give roughly the same nutrition, although some use goat milk or organic ingredients. However, the high price of formula has been in the spotlight, following Metro’s Formula for Change campaign in partnership with the charity Feed.
In April, the team went to parliament with over 100,000 signatures, urging for changes in the law to make it more accessible and affordable.
The campaign urged the government to ‘give retailers the green light to accept loyalty points, grocery vouchers provided by foodbanks and local authorities, and store gift cards as payment for infant formula’.
Following Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recommendations, the government is expected to make an announcement soon about what they will do to help parents with formula costs.
Since 2021, the cost of formula has skyrocketed. The most expensive brand on the market, Aptamil Advanced, is now sold for £18 a tub.
Desperate parents have been reduced to watering it down, going hungry themselves, and even stealing tubs off shop shelves, to ensure their babies get fed.
While the World Health Organisation recommends exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months of a baby’s life, there are many reasons why a parent might not do that, from adoption and cancer treatments to personal choice.
In February, the CMA released a report which found prices for infant formula increased by over 25% between March 2021 and April 2023.
It said this could be due to ‘weak or ineffective competition’, with sellers not given enough incentives to offer it at lower prices.
There are also ‘limited own-label alternatives’, unlike for most other groceries, it added.
They recommended that shoppers should be able to use loyalty points and gift cards to buy formula, although said the restrictions on advertising and promotions should remain.
Aldi, the UK’s fourth largest supermarket, said it made the commitment ahead of the government’s expected response to the report.
Julie Ashfield, Aldi’s chief commercial officer, said: ‘Shoppers should not be paying over the odds for the essentials.
‘As the UK’s cheapest supermarket, we’re committed to keeping prices low on the products our customers rely on most.
‘As formula prices remain at historic highs across the market, we want to reassure parents that at Aldi, there will be no unwelcome surprises at the checkout – we’re keeping our Mamia First Infant Formula at just £6.99 for at least the remainder of this year.’
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