Just un­der a year af­ter it bucked the trend on flour price in­creas­es, Nu­trim­ix is once again an­nounc­ing a re­duc­tion in the prices of its flour prod­ucts.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, Nu­trim­ix said, "As a lead­ing food man­u­fac­tur­er, we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing our cus­tomers with af­ford­able and high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts. To this end, we reg­u­lar­ly as­sess our raw ma­te­r­i­al and ship­ping costs, as well as oth­er ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to the pro­duc­tion of our prod­ucts."

The re­lease added, "Ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, we have re­duced the prices of our Coun­try Pride and Nu­trim­ix Pre­mi­um Grade 2 kilo­gramme (kg) and 10kg range of flour. Our Coun­try Pride 2kg and 10kg Bak­ers flour are now re­duced by 17 per cent, 2 kg All-Pur­pose by 8 per cent, and 10kg by 13 per cent. Both 2kg Cake and Whole Wheat flour are re­duced by 5 per cent. Our Nu­trim­ix Pre­mi­um Grade flour, 2kg and 10kg, are re­duced by 9 per cent and 10 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly."

Nu­trim­ix said the re­duc­tion is due to sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing the glob­al de­crease in wheat prices and ship­ping costs, as well as the com­pa­ny's im­proved in­ter­nal sys­tems, con­trols, and ini­tia­tives to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of our op­er­a­tions while re­duc­ing milling and pro­cess­ing costs.

The an­nounce­ment comes 10 months af­ter Nu­trim­ix an­nounced a price re­duc­tion in Ju­ly 2023.

Nu­trim­ix's an­nounce­ment of a re­duc­tion was swift­ly fol­lowed by com­peti­tors Sheik Lisha Ltd and state-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills al­so an­nounc­ing re­duced prices for their flour prod­ucts last year.

Pri­or to that, flour had con­sis­tent­ly in­creased in cost fol­low­ing pres­sures placed on grain and oth­er ma­te­ri­als for pro­duc­tion as a re­sult of the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict.

NFM raised flour prices in De­cem­ber 2021 and June 2022, cit­ing these sup­ply chain is­sues prompt­ed by the war, with oth­er sup­pli­ers fol­low­ing suit. This led to an in­crease of sev­er­al flour-based food items, in­clud­ing bread, roti and dou­bles. De­spite the drop in the price of flour, the pro­duc­ers of most of these items have not dropped their prices.

An ar­ti­cle on the busi­nessin­sid­er.com on Thurs­day in­di­cat­ed that wheat prices soared to their high­est lev­el in eight months thanks to a se­ries of dis­rup­tions stem­ming from geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict and ex­treme weath­er events.

Chica­go SRW wheat fu­tures con­tin­ued to surge through­out April, ris­ing 15 per cent in just the last month to trade at the high­est lev­el since Au­gust, ac­cord­ing to Bloomberg da­ta.

Stock­piles of wheat have been drawn low­er large­ly due to weath­er events and geopo­lit­i­cal dis­rup­tions. That in­cludes ex­cess rain in Eu­rope and dry soil in Ukraine, Rus­sia, Aus­tralia, and the US, all ma­jor wheat ex­porters.

Bloomberg not­ed that strong har­vests of the grain among coun­tries on the Black Sea have helped keep prices low­er, but fu­tures mar­kets are pric­ing in ex­pec­ta­tions for sup­ply pres­sures to soon send prices up again.

In ad­di­tion to weath­er events, Rus­sia's war with Ukraine has al­so dri­ven prices high­er. Rus­sia has at­tacked key grain hubs in Ukraine, which caused wheat prices to sky­rock­et in 2023. Ukraine's work­force has al­so been de­plet­ed by its need for sol­diers to fight back against Rus­sia's in­va­sion.