The latest grocery market report from Kantar showed inflation dropped to 2.6% in the 12 weeks to mid-May. This is down from 13.3% a year ago and the slowest pace since March 2022.

Kantar noted that the grocery inflation figure is calculated on a fixed basket of 30,000 products compared year on year, which means that individual shoppers can reduce their own level of inflation by buying cheaper and on-promotion products.

The analysis from Kantar shows that this certainly has been the case, with sales volumes of products on promotion and sales of supermarket own-label ranges growing faster than sales of branded products.

The grocery price data comes out ahead of the latest inflation estimates for the economy which as due to be published by the Central Statistics Office on 30 May.

Across the euro area, inflation has fallen significantly from the highs seen in late 2022 and this year has come close to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) policy target.

This in turn means that the central bank is expected to announce it is cutting rates at the policy meeting on 6 June.

Should inflation continue to slow, then further rate cuts may be on the cards, but ECB chief economist Philip Lane warned that the pace of those cuts may be relatively slow, meaning that interest rate costs for borrowers may remain relatively high for at least another year.