'Shrinkflation' hits more than 2500 consumer products over the past five years

The size of Toblerone chocolate, among other products, has significantly reduced in size. Photo / Getty Images

More than 2500 products have shrunk over the past five years despite being sold for the same price, official data shows.

According to the UK Office for National Statistics items the so-called "shrinkflation" effect has hit range from chocolate bars and toilet rolls to coffee and fruit juice. However most of the items getting smaller were food.

Between 2012 and 2017, 614 products had become larger.

The data revealed that the idea Brexit has led to a "shrinkflation" boom because the weaker pound made imports more expensive, is a fallacy.

Despite Brexit contributing to an increase in the price of some imported goods, the statistics office dismissed it as a reason for shrinkflation.

"Our analysis doesn't show a noticeable change following the referendum that would point to a Brexit effect," it said.

It also cast doubt on whether the cost of raw materials, on which manufacturers have often blamed price hikes, has increased.

The European import price of sugar has been falling since the middle of 2014, and reached a record low this March, it said.

Meanwhile, cocoa prices, another major ingredient, reached a five-year high in December 2015, but has fallen sharply over the past year.

Mark Jones, a food and drink solicitor at Gordons law firm, said: "Shrinkflation was born out of the recession and has gathered staggering pace since 2009. The report confirms this. Against the back drop of a weak economy, commodity prices have been rising over the past five years.

"The recession made people very price sensitive and you can see the evidence of that by looking at the impressive growth of discount retailers in the past five years: no retail sector has grown faster.

"Suppliers and retailers do not want to raise the 'on the shelf' price, but both have had to adapt to increasing commodity prices.

"Shrinking the size of the products being sold, whether that is toilet paper, chocolate or cleaning products, is just another way of pushing through a price increase, but in a more subtle way. How many of us noticed Andrex reduced the number of sheets on a toilet roll from 240 to 221?"