Lidl

A record-breaking Easter has helped retailers to strong sales growth over the last three months.

New figures from Kantar show total year-on-year sales increased by two per cent in the 12 weeks to 21 April, with the figures considerably helped by a record £2.5 billion spent in Easter week.

As well as the obvious boon in Easter egg sales, warm-weather food also received a boost as temperatures soared over the long weekend.

Among the retailers, growth of 8.6 per cent pushed Lidl’s market share to a new high of 5.7 per cent, up 0.3 percentage points compared with last year. “Half of Lidl’s sales now come from the fresh and chilled aisles and its performance this period was fuelled by customers spending an extra £14 million on dairy items and £13m on fruit, vegetables and salads,” explained Kantar’s head of retail and consumer insight, Fraser McKevitt.

Aldi was again the fastest-growing supermarket, a position it has held since July 2018.Aided by its store-opening programme, Aldi attracted an additional 823,000 shoppers through its doors to grow sales by 11.6 per cent and increase its market share by 0.6 points to 7.9 per cent.

Co-op and Ocado were the only other retailers to gain market share on last year, moving to 6.1 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively, with the Co-op benefiting from periods of warmer weather as people shop closer to home.

With the CMA ruling out the Sainsbury’s-Asda merger, Tesco has been able to cement its position as the country’s biggest supermarket. “More than three quarters of British households visited Tesco in the past 12 weeks, over five million more than each of its two closest rivals,” said McKevitt.“Though sales were up one per cent, growth was behind the market which meant a loss of share compared with last year to 27.3 per cent.”

Sainsbury’s and Asda are continuing to battle it out for second place, with Sainsbury’s reclaiming second position despite a sales decline of 1.2 per cent. The supermarket achieved double-digit growth online, which coincides with the launch of its first mobile-only payment store in central London this week. Asda increased sales by 0.3 per cent to take market share of 15.2 per cent.

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