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Kantar Worldpanel: Alcohol sales help keep grocery figures in the black

Published:  26 September, 2016

While overall figures for the supermarket sector remain relatively flat with growth at 0.3%, alcohol sales provided a needed boost, up 8.5% according to Kantar Worldpanel's most recent figures.

While overall figures for the supermarket sector remain relatively flat with growth at 0.3%, alcohol sales provided a needed boost, up 8.5% according to Kantar Worldpanel's most recent figures.

The figures cover the 12 weeks ending on 11 September 2016.

"While overall sales growth has been slow, consumers have been keen to celebrate Britain's Olympic and Paralympic golden summer, boosting alcohol sales by 8.5% in the past four weeks. Sparkling wines including Prosecco and Champagne led the way with growth of 36.0% as promotional events across a number of retailers successfully tapped into the nation's celebratory mood," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel.

Tesco's alcohol sales over the summer period helped to bolster the retailers figures.

"Tesco's summer 'Drinks Festival' helped grow its alcohol sales faster than any other major category, and while the retailer's sales have not yet returned to growth, a decline of 0.2% year-on-year is its best performance since March 2014. This period, its Extra and larger stores delivered a positive contribution to performance, though market share fell back by 0.1 percentage points and Tesco now accounts for 28.1% of the overall grocery market," said McKevitt.

The Co-op also was able to drive growth through alcohol sales for the period. "The Co-op renaissance continues showing growth for the sixteenth month in a row.

"Co-op continues to outperform the market with sales growth of 3.1%, primarily through its own label lines. The convenience retailer was another to post strong alcohol sales, though its produce lines were its fastest growing category, helping market share increase to 6.6%."

"The discounters growth ploughs on- up 9.5% at Lidl, [which is] enough to reach a new record marketshare high of 4.6%. Meanwhile Aldi growth picked up slightly to 11.6%," said McKevitt.

While the overall growth in the sector may not seem spectacular, price deflation does seem to be slowing. McKevitt said: "Grocery price inflation has not kicked in yet with like-for-like price down -1.1%, but that is a movement upwards of 0.2 percentage points.  If this trend continues prices will rise by the new year."

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