But it's cyclical. NMW and power costs go up, which forces companies like Asda, manufacturers and to a lesser extent farmers, who are largely self employed but will likely employ farm hands, to increase their prices because their costs, which are dominated by cheap labour and utilities, go up.
Anyway, these threads always make me wonder - are there people who always buy X brand of butter no matter what it costs or if the pack size is reduced?
To me that makes no sense because butter is butter and there's not much discernable difference between types - I once bought 10 different blocks of 'fancy' butter from Ocado (mostly on offer), partly because I wanted to make up the minimum order but also partly to try all these different wonderful butters that were apparently 'the best'. And while some might have been slightly nicer than others, I can't think of one that stood out so much that it was worth paying nearly twice as much per kilo as basic own brand butter.
But anyway, there's currently 14 blocks of 'normal' butter on the Asda website and it's only really the big brands like Lurpak, Country Life, Kerrygold and Anchor that are 200g. President, all the different Asda ones and a small local brand are all still 250 g or multiples of. So it's only if you buy big brand butter that you'd think it's got smaller, but I wouldn't buy that unless it's on offer that makes it the cheapest option, which interestingly it currently is (Country Life - 7.50/kg).