Pasta to get pricier very soon due to bad wheat harvest

Shoppers should expect to pay more for their pasta in coming months amid shortages of its key ingredient following a disastrous growing season.

Shortage of durum wheat, a key ingredient in pasta, is going to push the prices up , said Jason Bull, director of Eurostar Commodities, which imports more than 10,000 tonnes of food ingredients each year.

A scramble for durum wheat has pushed its price up nearly 90 per cent this summer.

Bull added that the magnitude of durum wheat's cost increase imply that it will be passed on to consumers. He estimated a 500g packet of spaghetti could increase in price by 60p to £1.80, and that too, starting next month as higher costs had already reached the factory gate.

“The market is completely out of control and as a result there has been an approximately 90% increase in raw material prices as well as increases in freight,” Bull said. “This is a dire situation hitting all semolina producers and all buyers of durum wheat across the globe. Companies are buying at record high prices.”

The crisis has been triggered by a worsening situation in major durum wheat producer Canada, where the crop forecast has been revised down by more than one-third from five million tonnes to only 3.4 million tonnes.

The seriousness of the situation can be ascertained by the fact that the market is predicting there will not be enough durum wheat to meet global demand.

Durum wheat is the second most cultivated species of wheat after common wheat and is ground down into semolina to make a variety of different products including pasta and macaroni.

The unusual extreme heat in Canada has been cited for the shortage. The country has seen hardly any rainfall since the crop was planted.

Furthermore, French wheat also reportedly had a poor year because of excessive rain affecting quality and yield.

There are also supply issues in Italy, with one food industry expert predicting a packet of spaghetti could end up costing up to 50 per cent more.