The founder of beer brand Cobra, Lord Bilimoria, has warned rising prices caused by a “viscous cycle” of cost pressures.
Lord Bilimoria told the BBC that “virtually every business in every sector” has been affected by rising inflation, tax increases and interest rate rises.
He told BBC 5 Live’s Wake up to Money programme: “Our input costs in every way – bottling, energy – are up. Freight costs have soared, sometimes ten-times. Wages are increasing and on top of that there are labour shortages.
“It does mean that businesses have to put up prices. But the consumer is already feeling the squeeze. It is a really challenging situation for everyone”.
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According to the BBC, Lord Bilimoria declined to say how much bottles of beer will be increasing by, but said price rises “were a necessity” and “there’s no running away from that.”
The comments come as the Tesco chairman, John Allan warned that the “worst is yet to come” ahead of a potential 5% increase in the coming months. Allan also attributed the rise in national insurance, alongside, surging energy prices, which will see a fuel bills rocket from April 2022.
Allan told BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “Food is a relatively small part of household spending, it’s only about 9%, that figure has halved in the last half century.
“But of course, it’s a bigger proportion for those on the lowest incomes. So I think we’re concerned particularly about what can we do to try to protect those who are hardest up, who are going to suffer most from that?”
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