Around 250 products are now being price matched with equivalent products at Aldi, covering both Sainsbury’s and branded products across meat, fruit, vegetables and dairy.

Products which are part of the price match scheme include:

• Sainsbury’s 21-day matured rump steak 225g, which is now £2.32 (was £2.50)
• Sainsbury’s British whole chicken breast fillets 1kg, which is now £4.79 (was £5)
• Sainsbury’s smoked basa fillets 240g, which is now £2.39 (was £2.50)
• Sainsbury’s plain flour, which is now 45p (was 80p)
• Imperfectly tasty baby potatoes 1kg, which is now 65p (was 95p)

The supermarket said the price match scheme would help shoppers who are having to deal with the financial impacts of the pandemic, and follows the commitment of chief executive Simon Roberts last year to “put food back at the heart of the business”.

The scheme sits alongside Sainsbury’s price lock campaign, which keeps prices steady on around 2,500 everyday products for at least eight weeks.

Roberts said: “We are making great progress delivering our Food First plan and I’m determined that in these tough times, we do even more to help our customers save money. Our new commitment to match Aldi prices on hundreds of our most popular products will mean our customers can be confident that they are getting the quality they expect from Sainsbury’s at great prices.” 

The supermarket price battle

Sainsbury’s isn’t the first supermarket to attempt to align its prices with Aldi. Last year Tesco launched its own price match scheme in a bid to fight off competition from the budget grocery stores which have enjoyed growing popularity in the UK.

However, they still have some work to do, as a study by Which? found a significant difference between prices at the likes of Aldi and Lidl last year compared to the bigger names.

It tracked the price of 45 products ‒ including the likes of Hovis bread, Knorr stock cubes and free-range eggs ‒ across eight supermarkets in 2020 and used the averages to put together a shopping trolley for each.

Lidl was cheapest at £42.67 on average, just ahead of Aldi which charged £43.01. 

This was significantly less than shoppers would pay at Sainsbury’s though, which charged an average of £56.38. Only Ocado and Waitrose worked out more expensive.