Kepie Watch · Freezer Aisle · this week

Frozen-imported-chopped vs Fresh-NZ-bunched — the spinach maths

Different products: frozen vs fresh; imported vs NZ-grown; chopped vs whole-leaf. We compare per-100g raw weight here. The cooked-weight ratio widens further once the fresh leaves wilt down.

3.6^×

the per-kg price of fresh baby spinach versus frozen blanched spinach at the same PAK’nSAVE.

Per 100g, side by side

The shorter bar is the freezer aisle.

"$5.99 buys 300g fresh. Or 1kg frozen. Plus six months of shelf life."

Kepie Watch · Issue 001

What it means

If you cook spinach, the freezer aisle is the value buy.

At PAK’nSAVE this week, $5.99 buys a 300g bag of Pams fresh baby spinach. $5.49 buys a 1kg bag of SB frozen blanched spinach. Per kilo that’s $19.97 vs $5.49 — the frozen option costs 3.6 times less.

And the cooked-weight angle widens it. Frozen spinach is already-wilted concentrate — 100g of it cooks down to roughly what 250-300g of fresh leaves cook down to. Drop it into a curry, a saag, a frittata, or a smoothie and you’re looking at a real-meal gap closer to six times.

Frozen also keeps for six months in the freezer. Fresh wilts in a week. The bag of spinach you forgot at the back of the fridge IS spinach you paid for and threw out.

The honest trade-off: fresh wins for raw uses — salads, garnish, smoothies that need bite. Frozen wins for anything cooked. Most household spinach goes into cooked food.

The SB bag is imported; the Pams bag is grown in NZ. That’s the second trade you’re making, and worth naming up front. If buying local matters more than the per-kilo gap, fresh still has the answer.

We pick the cheapest valid SKU per category at each store every Friday. The two spinach SKUs above are the actual products we measured.