A spike in fresh produce sales has helped Lidl gain ground in the nation’s retailer rankings as its market share has reached a new record-high of 5.2%.
The latest Kantar data for the 12 weeks ending 13 August 2017, shows Lidl has inched up 0.7 percentage points year-on-year to become the UK’s seventh largest supermarket.
“Ten million households visited the retailer’s expanding network of stores during the past 12 weeks, with alcohol and fresh produce performing particularly well as the retailer increased sales by 18.9% overall,” says Fraser McKevitt, head of retailer and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel.
“Lidl is growing sales 40% faster with families than with households without children. Families tend to buy more items each time they shop, so strong growth with this demographic has helped Lidl to increase its average basket size year-on-year.”
Hot on the heels of Lidl is fellow discount retailer Aldi, which grew sales by 17.2%, attracting 1.1 million more shoppers through its doors than this time last year and increasing market share by 0.8 percentage points to stand at 7%, explains McKevitt.
And sales at the UK’s so-called “Big Four” –– Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons –– also increased.
“Overall supermarket sales grew by 4% year on year, although disappointing weather hit summer favourites hard during the past month.
“All four of Britain’s biggest grocers managed to grow sales for the fifth consecutive period, a run of collective success not seen since 2013.
“However, this welcome period of sustained growth hasn’t been enough to entirely offset pressure from the discounters: the big four now account for just 69.3% of the UK grocery market – down from 76.3% five years ago – and that looks set to fall further in the coming months.”
Overall sales grew by 3% at Tesco, helped by an increase in volume sales, but market share fell to 27.8% –– down 0.3 percentage points compared to last year.
Meanwhile, Morrisons increased sales by 2.6%, while market share dropped to 10.4%.
At Sainsbury’s sales increased 2% as the grocer’s market share fell to 15.8% –– down 0.3 percentage points year-on-year.
