The supermarket chain, working in collaboration with its pork farmers, has created a pricing mechanism, based on robust and transparent data, that has paid above market price for fresh pork since September 2020.
The total investment in its pricing mechanism has hit £5m.
Resilience and security
The model was created to help provide resilience and security by reducing market volatility, influencing the Standard Pig Price and benefitting the wider pork sector.
The news comes after NFU Scotland warned last week that processors and retailers must deliver a great share of rising pig prices back to producers or risk losing the sector.
Through the Sainsbury's pricing structure, the retailer has been able to offer additional short-term support through a £2.8m investment for its pork producers, giving them the opportunity to align all pigs supplied to Sainsbury’s, not currently part of the model, to a fixed price for the 12-week period from 13/03/22 – 05/06/22.
Relationships
Gavin Hodgson, Sainsbury’s head of agriculture, aquaculture and horticulture said: “At Sainsbury’s we really value the relationships we have with our suppliers and believe that through support and collaboration we can uphold flexible, transparent supply chains that are able to navigate instability.
“The pork sector has seen unprecedented cost challenges and we hope that our further investment will provide our producers with security whilst maintaining high levels of animal health and welfare as well as product quality and great value for our customers.”
The supermarket said it would continue to review its pricing model to ensure the longer-term safeguarding of supply, and work in collaboration with producers to deliver a supply chain that is “resilient, efficient, and engaged”.
Only last month it was revealed that Boparan Restaurant Group has partnered with retailer Sainsbury to roll out food hubs across its sites in the UK, as part of a rationalisation of its eat-in and takeaway offering.