Healthy increases in meat and poultry sales feature in the latest supermarket share figures for Ireland which are published today by Kantar Worldpanel.
The company’s analysts say that new figures covering the 12 weeks ending April 24, 2016, show Ireland’s supermarkets enjoying a “robust performance” for the country’s overall grocery market, with sales increasing by 3.8% compared to last year.
“As competition amongst the main grocery retailers remains intense, we’re actually seeing shoppers visit stores more often,” said Kantar’s commercial director in Ireland, David Berry (pictured above).
“Over the latest 12 weeks the average household has made 63 separate trips for grocery items, an additional four trips compared with last year. This is linked to a reduction in the overall size of the average grocery trip, which has dropped from €22.40 (£17.65) last year to €21.60 (£17.02) this time round. We also see a rise in top-up shopping trips whereby consumers buy fewer items more regularly throughout the week.”
SuperValu remains the largest supermarket in Ireland, capturing 23% of consumer spend on groceries and increasing sales by 2.8% year on year.
“We’ve seen consumers continue to allocate more of their shopping budget to fresh food over the past four years, and SuperValu has managed to capitalise on this very successfully,” said Mr Berry. “Most recently the retailer has launched its ‘Good Food Karma’ campaign, which aims to inspire the general public to cook from scratch using fresh ingredients, seeing strong growth across fresh staples in the past 12 weeks as a result. Sales of fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry all saw healthy increases.”
Tesco remains in second place in Ireland, with a market share of 22.2%. The supermarket managed to sell more items this year but at a lower average price after “investing in low prices in a bid to win back customers”.
Dunnes Stores is reported to have continued its strong performance, with sales growth reaching an “impressive” 8% during the 12-week period.
Lidl, meanwhile, has maintained its position as the fastest growing retailer, attracting 43,000 new shoppers this year. At the same time, Aldi grew its sales by just over 1% and now commands 10.9% of the grocery spend in Ireland.
