Food inflation to benefit UK supermarkets September 6, 2010 UPWARD pressures on food prices appear to be here to stay. Global demand is increasing while droughts and fires last month hit harvests in Russia and Ukraine. Market researcher Kantar Worldpanel anticipates that UK grocery inflation will rise to an annualised 4 per cent by the end of 2010 from its current rate of 2 [...]
Aldi’s co-founder Theo Albrecht dies July 28, 2010 THEO Albrecht – one of the founding brothers of the Aldi grocery chain – has died at the age of 88. Albrecht had a personal fortune of more than £10bn. He died in his home city of Essen, on Saturday. Together with his brother Karl, two years his senior, he built up Europe’s biggest budget [...]
Graduates with chutzpah can find jobs July 28, 2010 IT’S tough out there for graduates. A survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters found that for every job there are 68.8 applicants, with the number going up to 205 for jobs in food, confectionary and cosmetics. Aldi, the supermarket chain, received 12,000 applications for 50 places on its management scheme. Seventy-eight per cent of [...]
Northern Foods revenues slide July 13, 2010 Food manufacturer Northern Foods said sales fell in the first quarter of its fiscal year, reflecting its decision to pull out of low margin contracts. The company, which makes own-label products for retailers as diverse as premium food seller Marks & Spencer and discounter Aldi, said yesterday comparable sales were down 1.6 per cent in [...]
Northern Foods relies on Goodfella’s June 1, 2010 NORTHERN Foods has said it hopes the relaunch of Goodfella’s pizzas will help it to cope with tough trading conditions as it yesterday repor?ted flat annual profits. Chief executive Stefan Barden said the firm aimed to replicate the success it achieved with the relaunch of its Fox’s biscuits, which lifted it to number two in [...]
Asda takes over Netto in £778m deal May 27, 2010 ASDA has bought the Netto supermarket chain in the UK for £778m. Netto has 193 stores, which will be converted to small Asda stores by next Summer, if regulators give the deal the go-ahead. Asda plans to employ up to twice as many staff in each of the stores it has acquired. It sees the [...]
Flight to quality in stores February 2, 2010 Intense competition among Britain’s top grocers has hit sales growth at smaller hard discounters Aldi and Lidl, while Asda has suffered most from recent severe weather, market researchers said yesterday. Kantar Worldpanel, the new name for TNS Worldpanel, said sales at Britain’s grocers rose 5.2 per cent in the 12 weeks to 24 January, helped [...]
Waitrose and Sainsbury’s boost their brands January 12, 2010 RETAILERS have had a bumper Christmas according to the British?Retail?Consortium, but here is my review of 2009 as far as supermarkets are concerned. Graph 1 shows the share of total attention that each of the six received on BrandIndex. Over the course of 2009, Aldi and Asda dropped, Tesco and Morrison’s stayed steady, and Waitrose [...]
Asda ramps up supermarket price war January 5, 2010 ASDA yesterday upped the ante in the supermarket wars by announcing its biggest round of price cuts in a decade. The supermarket said it was slashing the price of one in five of its products by an average of 13 per cent. The move comes after Tesco last week promised customer savings of more than [...]
WANTED: STEADY HAND AT THE TILL November 19, 2009 THE departure of Wm Morrison boss Marc Bolland won’t blow the supermarket off course, retail experts said yesterday as the Bradford-based company posted another set of strong sales figures and customer growth. With Bolland sidelined ahead of taking the reins at Marks & Spencer in January, finance director Richard Pennycook took responsibility for yesterday’s trading [...]