Small businesses in Britain are being hammered by rising costs which they would struggle to pass onto cash-strapped consumers.
WATERBEACH, United Kingdom – At the Milton Brewery in eastern England, Richard Naisby’s warehouse is jammed full of pallets stacked high with sacks of malt, a key ingredient for his traditional cask beers.
He has put his prices up by 7% over the past year, but like many smaller companies, he finds himself squeezed in the middle: not big enough to negotiate better rates from suppliers and facing resistance to price hikes from buyers. During the pandemic, the government provided support through a mix of grants, loans, and temporary tax cuts. Following the jump in energy prices, it set up a scheme to help with utility bills which runs to the end of March, with a scaled-back scheme for a year after that. But price rises are still punishing.For William Fugard from Gusto Organic, the glass bottles in which he sells his upmarket soft drinks have risen from 8 pence each to 17 pence.
Their experiences are a far cry from the hopeful message delivered by Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey this month, who said there were signs that inflation might be starting to turn a corner after it edged down to 10.5% in December from 10.7% in November.
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