The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress has increased by 759,000 since May 2022, when the RBA began a cycle of interest rate increases. Official interest rates are now at 4.1% in September 2023, the highest official interest rates since May 2012, over a decade ago.

The number of Australians ‘At Risk’ of mortgage stress (1,566,000) is at a record high. The proportion of mortgage holders at 30.2% remains below the record highs reached during the Global Financial Crisis of 15 years ago because of the larger size of the Australian mortgage market today. The record high of 35.6% of mortgage holders in mortgage stress was reached in mid-2008.

The number of mortgage holders considered ‘Extremely At Risk’, has now increased to 1,066,000 (21.0%), which is now significantly above the long-term average over the last 15 years at 15.3%. 

What does this mean for Berries?

Previously we have discussed a lot of the berry customers are highly affluent, we do have to recognise that a large portion of sales comes from the Mid and Lower affluent customers. Spending will continue to tighten up as they are looking to stretch their already stretched budgets.

We are watching closely the market’s ability to push prices up once a market has peaked. As retailers continue to look for value for their customers, they will continuously look to rotate “in season”, this will correlate with retailers investing in space, and catalogues and focus on executing these categories. Our focus is to have retailers engaged for as long as possible, and we do this by offering great products, available when they need them so that categories don’t lose momentum.