Grocery market shows slow growth
New figures on the UK grocery market show slow growth in the 12 weeks ending 19 July, with overall sales increasing by 0.8% year-on-year, with stronger growth being enjoyed by the smaller retailers.
According to grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, The Co-operative returned to growth for the first time since July 2014, increasing its sales by 1% although its overall share of 6.3% remained the same as last year.
Despite a fall in sales of 0.3%, Sainsbury’s market share edged up to 16.5% to beat Asda, whose share now stands at 16.4% after a 2.7% drop in sales.
Kantar said Morrisons was the best performer among the ‘big four’ retailers, although sales fell back by 0.1% which meant its share was 10.9%. Meanwhile, sales at Tesco fell by 0.6% with its share standing at 28.5%.
Sales at Iceland were up 3% while its share of the market was 2%.
Growth accelerated at Waitrose, where sales climbed by 3%. Kantar said customers taking advantage of the recently introduced ‘Pick Your Own Offers’ initiative helped push the grocer’s market share up to 5%, an increase of 0.1 percentage points compared with last year.
Aldi’s sales grew by 16.6% while Lidl saw growth of 11.3%, meaning both have moved to new market share highs of 5.6% and 4% respectively.
Commenting on the figures, Fraser McKevitt, head of consumer and retail insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “The continued slow growth of the overall market can be explained by minimal volume growth and lower like-for-like prices, both as a result of cheaper commodity prices and the fierce competition between supermarkets. Comparable groceries are now 1.6% cheaper than a year ago, meaning prices have been falling since September 2014, although they are projected to start rising again by early 2016.”
