Yahoo Finance Sport and sunshine fuel surge in UK supermarket alcohol sales
Britons have downed £158m more alcohol in the last three months compared with 2016, as they enjoyed sunny weather and a string of major sporting events including Wimbledon, the British and Irish Lions rugby tour and the British Grand Prix.
A 6% rise year-on-year rise in alcohol sales, a continuing boom in sales of sun cream and ice-cream as well as higher prices on essentials including butter and fish all helped boost supermarket sales by more than 3% for the fourth consecutive period, according to the market researcher Kantar Worldpanel. Sales of cider and gin were both particularly strong – up 20% and 29% in value terms.
A year on from the vote to leave the EU, grocery price inflation remained steady at 3.2% in the three months to 16 July, the same as reported by Kantar last month. The Kantar figures are not the official inflation figures but are based on 75,000 identical products compared year on year in the proportions purchased by shoppers.
“June’s hot spell was good news for UK grocers, with sales particularly buoyant around the hottest June day for 40 years. Ice-cream sales were up 34% in June alone, while sales of suncare products increased by 40% year on year as Brits enjoyed the unexpected sunshine,” said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar.
Fruit and vegetable sales rose by 7%, or £170m, as Brits tried to offset the summer indulgence.
“With the likelihood of eating and drinking outside also increasing, people are more inclined to indulge and treat themselves,” said Mike Watkins of Nielsen UK, which also monitors supermarket spending.
It found that monthly ice-cream sales were up 45%, alcohol mixers up 44%, fresh beef burgers up 29% and soft drinks up 16%. Overall, Nielsen found that supermarket sales rose 5.1% in the four weeks to 15 July, the highest year-on-year rise in at least four years, helped by the June heatwave.
There were also continued signs of attempts to save money as rising inflation dented disposable income.
Sales of supermarkets’ own-label goods rose by nearly 7% year on year in the last three months, according to Kantar, to account for just over 51% of spending, a record high marking a switch away from more expensive brands.
Meanwhile, discounters Aldi and Lidl were by far the fastest-growing chains in the UK, with sales up 17.9% and 19.4% respectively.
Lidl is now neck and neck with Waitrose on 5.1% market share, raising the prospect of the German chain becoming the UK’s seventh largest grocer next month.
All the major supermarkets, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, increased sales for the fourth consecutive period. Tesco was the fastest growing of the big four, with sales up 2.3%, and Asda the slowest, with sales up 1%, but all four lost market share compared with a year ago as the discounters opened more stores.
Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, said the weather was a bonus to supermarkets, helping to boost demand where better management, a rising volume of sales and manageable inflation were already boosting cash generation.
“While we are alive to the strong performance of the discounters, their free lunch has ended and so their combined threat is more manageable,” he said.
