'Dough' it takes to buy UK bread rising | North Korea Times

'Dough' it takes to buy UK bread rising

North Korea Times Tuesday 16th December, 2003

The price of a loaf of British bread, which until September had remained almost unchanged since the 1980s, will rise next month by as much as 12 cents.

British Bakeries, the country's largest bakery, said Tuesday the price increase is brought about by increasing wheat prices.

Supermarket bread prices increased in September for the first time in a generation after last summer's heatwave cut the British wheat harvest by 9 percent, the London Telegraph reported.

Flour prices went up by 20 percent and bread prices by 10 percent, British Bakeries said.

Now bakers are facing a further $52 a ton hike across all grades of flour as the full effect of a flour shortage, brought on by a 25 percent collapse in the Russian and Ukrainian harvests, takes hold.

The anticipated increase is partly the result of a miscalculation by Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which pushed up wheat prices by $9 a ton two weeks ago -- after it admitted overstating the area under wheat by 156,000 acres and the consequent wheat harvest by 500,000 tons.

The miscalculation cost farmers $90 million.