Producer price inflation, UK: January 2022

Changes in the prices of goods bought and sold by UK manufacturers, including price indices of materials and fuels purchased (input prices) and factory gate prices (output prices).

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25 November 2022 07:00

We have identified and corrected an error in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Producer Price Indices (PPI) affecting data from January to October 2022.

The error was because of diesel fuel not being allocated a correct weight within the output price index, which resulted in Petroleum Products being around half the correct weight of 6.5% since the start of the year.

This error does not affect the overall trend, but it has led to the headline 12-month output price rate being revised up by an average of 1.8 percentage points between January and October 2022.

The 12-month output price rate now stands at 17.2% in October 2022. The peak was revised up to 19.7% in July 2022.

The correction in Output PPI weights, and the inclusion of diesel prices within the data, now mean that from January to October 2022 Petroleum Products has the largest positive contribution to the 12-month rate of output inflation. For October 2022, Petroleum Products contributed 6.1 percentage points to the 12-month rate (revised from 0.0). This is notably higher than the second main contributor, Food Products, which has a revised contribution of 3.5 percentage points in October.

The Input PPI weights were less affected. Although the upwardly revised Output PPI indices are used to estimate domestic inputs, the effect of the higher price was offset by a lower contribution from imported fuels, which was already reflected in diesel prices. The average impact on the input 12-month rate was 0.1 percentage points. In October 2022, the 12-month input price rate stood at 19.5%, with the peak in June 2022 now standing at 24.5%.

This issue occurred because of a processing error. All the affected datasets from January to October 2022 have been corrected. However, the commentary within the statistical bulletins has not been amended. Users should therefore refer to the datasets for the corrected figures. We are adopting additional system checks to ensure that this does not happen in the future. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

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Contact:
Email Chris Jenkins

Release date:
16 February 2022

Next release:
23 March 2022

1. Main points

  • The headline rate of output prices showed positive growth of 9.9% on the year to January 2022, up from 9.3% in December 2021.

  • The headline rate of input prices showed positive growth of 13.6% on the year to January 2022, down from 13.8% in December 2021.

  • Other manufactured products and metals and non-metallic minerals provided the largest upward contributions to the annual rates of output and input inflation, respectively.

  • The next PPI release will include the annual update of weights; the new weights will be applied using December 2021 as the link month.

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2. Analysis

On the month, the rate of output inflation was 1.2% in January 2022, up from 0.3% in December 2021 (Table 1). The monthly rate has been positive for 16 consecutive months, since October 2020.

Of the 10 product groups, nine displayed positive annual growth in January 2022. Other manufactured products provided the largest upward contribution of 2.23 percentage points to the annual rate (Figure 2) and had annual price growth of 9.3% in January 2022 (Table 2). This was mainly being driven by products of wood, cork, straw and plaiting materials for domestic market.

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The annual rate of output inflation increased by 0.6 percentage points from 9.3% in December 2021 to 9.9% in January 2022.

Of the 10 product groups, eight displayed upward contributions to the change in the rate, with other manufactured products providing the largest at 0.29 percentage points. The second largest contribution to the change in the rate came from food products at 0.21 percentage points (Figure 3).

On the month, the rate of input inflation was 0.9% in January 2022, up from 0.1% in December 2021 (Table 3). The monthly rate has remained positive for 17 consecutive months since September 2020.

The annual rate of imported inputs was 6.2% in January 2022, down from 7.3% in December 2021 (Table 4).

The largest upward contribution to the annual input inflation rate came from metals and non-metallic minerals, which contributed 3.80 percentage points (Figure 4) and had positive annual price growth of 18.6% in January 2022 (Table 5). This was mainly driven by basic iron and steel and of ferro-alloys for domestic market.  

The annual input inflation rate remained positive for a fourteenth consecutive month but decreased by 0.2 percentage points from 13.8% in December 2021 to 13.6% in January 2022.

Of the 10 product groups, two displayed downward contributions to the change in the annual rate, with metals and non-metallic minerals displaying the largest at 0.38 percentage points (Figure 5). The annual rate for this product group fell from 21.1% in December 2021 to 18.6% in January 2022. The monthly rate of 0.4% between December 2021 and January 2022 is lower than the 2.5% between the same months a year ago. This has pulled the annual rate down by 2.5 percentage points.

Crude oil provided the second largest downward contribution to the change in the rate, at 0.18 percentage points. There was an 8.8 percentage point decrease from 54.0% in December 2021 to 45.2% in January 2022. This was also caused by the monthly rate increasing by less than this time last year.

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3. Producer price inflation data

Producer price inflation time series
Dataset | Released 16 February 2022
A comprehensive selection of data on input and output indices. Contains producer price indices of materials and fuels purchased and output of manufacturing industry by broad sector.

Output and input producer price inflation: contributions to the 12-month rates
Dataset | Released 16 February 2022
Contributions to the 12-month rates of input and output producer price inflation by component and overall rates.

Producer price inflation
Dataset MM22 | Released 16 February 2022
UK price movement data at all manufacturing, aggregated industry and product group level. Data supplied from individual manufacturers, importers and exporters. Monthly, quarterly and annual data.

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4. Glossary

Weight

This is the importance of the price of interest relative to other prices collected. With annual chain linking, this is updated every year using business turnover data.

Index value

Price level in a specific basket of goods.

Annual growth rate

The annual inflation rate.

Link factor

A smoothing factor applied to create a continuous series following a weights change.

Contribution

A measure of influence that the index has on the overall growth rate. This depends on both the magnitude of the weight and the inflation rate. A positive contribution is an index that is driving a change in the annual growth rate value. Where the contribution is positive but the growth is negative, this indicates that the index is reducing the annual growth rate (for example, the growth rate would be higher if this index had a lower weight).

Producer price inflation

Changes in the prices of goods bought and sold by UK manufacturers, including price indices of materials and fuels purchased (input prices) and factory gate prices (output prices).

Output prices

The factory gate price (output price) is the amount received by UK producers for the goods that they sell to the domestic market. It includes the margin that businesses make on goods, in addition to costs such as labour, raw materials and energy, as well as interest on loans, site or building maintenance, or rent.

Input prices

The input price measures the price of materials and fuels bought by UK manufacturers for processing. It includes materials and fuels that are both imported or sourced within the domestic market. It is not limited to materials used in the final product but includes what is required by businesses in their normal day-to-day running, such as fuels.

Services producer price inflation

Quarterly estimates monitoring the changes in prices charged for services provided to UK-based customers for a range of industries.

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5. Measuring the data

Producer Price Inflation (PPI) uses contributions to identify how indices influence the overall inflation rate. This section gives additional information on the calculation and how to interpret it.

Example scenarios

The following gives examples of how weight and inflation rate changes most commonly affect the contribution. In PPI, the weights usually have greater influence on the contribution as these tend to show greater change than the annual inflation rate.

  • Decrease in weight and in inflation rate – contribution is negative

  • Decrease in weight, increase in inflation rate – contribution is usually negative

  • No change in weight or inflation rate – no change

  • No change in weight, increase in inflation rate – no change

  • Increase in weight, decrease in inflation rate – contribution is usually positive

  • Increase in weight, no change in inflation rate – contribution is positive

  • Increase in weight, increase in inflation rate – contribution is positive

Contributions are calculated using the following formula:


Quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in the Producer Price Index (PPI) Quality and Methodology Information report and the Services Producer Price Indices (SPPI) Quality and Methodology information report.

Other useful documentation for the PPI and the Services Producer Price Index (SPPI) are:

  1. Producer price indices methods changes

  2. Chain-linking in business prices

  3. Producer price weight changes

  4. Services producer price weight changes

  5. Guidance on using indices in indexation clauses (PDF, 197KB)

  6. PPI methods and guidance (PDF, 1.14MB)

  7. SPPI user guidance and methodology article

  8. PPI standard errors article

  9. SPPI standard errors article

Sterling effective exchange rate

The sterling effective exchange rate measures changes in the strength of sterling relative to basket of other currencies. The sterling effective exchange rate is only indicative of the rates applied to producer prices. This is because the sterling effective exchange rate is a trade weighted index that represents all UK trade, whereas producer prices reflect transaction in the manufacture sector.

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6. Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • These data provide users with valuable insight into the changes in the process of goods and services bought and sold by UK manufacturers.

  • Our data is very comprehensive, covering many products at a much greater level of detail than other surveys.

Limitations

  • Some products are produced by only a small number of manufacturers, meaning that there may not be enough manufacturers for a detailed and robust analysis and the sector may be volatile, requiring some estimation.

  • The data can be revised for 12 months.

  • The data for the latest two months of the Producer Price Index (PPI) and two quarters of the Services Producer Price Index (SPPI) are provisional.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) in January 2022

Response rates for the domestic PPI and Import Price Index (IPI) show a decrease between December 2021 and January 2022, whereas the response rates for the Export Price Index (EPI) show an increase between December 2021 and January 2022 (Table 6).

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Contact details for this Statistical bulletin

Chris Jenkins
business.prices@ons.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 1633 456907