As Tesco introduces its increasingly disgruntled band of suppliers to “Discounter House” in Cheshunt, and customers to its self-appointed role of Britain’s biggest discounter, the discounter chain that has the UK’s leading supermarkets running scared, Aldi, is not exactly trembling in its boots.
The German chain has come out all guns blazing in fact, with an amazing prediction in The Guardian that it could take as much as 40 per cent of the UK market.
Aldi registered its strongest ever sales week last month and growth of 22.1 per cent in the latest 12-week period monitored by TNS Worldpanel. It has consequently reached another record market share of three per cent, but the 40 per cent claim, by Aldi director Graham Hetherington, still comes as a bit of a surprise. “In Germany, we own 40 per cent of the market and I don't see why we couldn't have that situation here,” he told the broadsheet. “We want to be in every town in the UK and experience tells us we could have up to 3,000 stores.”
Tesco’s increasingly desperate bid to reposition itself to combat this threat, which has seen it call most of its suppliers into its headquarters in the last 10 days to ask for bigger over-riders, has had no impact on Aldi to date, Hetherington added. “We have not seen any difference,” he said. “The majority of our growth is coming from the big four supermarkets, particularly Tesco.”
Analysts who had previously argued that the rise of discounters including Aldi, Lidl and Netto would be a short-term, credit crunch induced blip, are beginning to revise their opinions. Despite continuing to grow, Tesco’s recent showing has been described as “lukewarm” and in the four weeks to October 5, sales at discounters climbed 14 per cent, while Tesco's growth slowed to 3.5 per cent.
