Aldi fined over price-fixing in Germany June 18, 2015 Aldi is among the retailers fined by Germany's competition authority over price fixing. Read more: Bargain Booze is playing Aldi at its own game The discounter is one of seven food retailers and four producers which have been fined €151.6m (£108.9m) over price fixing on "some products". Andreas Mundt, the president of Germany's cartel office, [...]
Billion Poundland: Profits up 18.6 per cent for budget retailer in first year since IPO June 18, 2015 Poundland’s profits soared 18.6 per cent in the 12 months to 29 March as it passed £1bn in sales for the first time. Read more: Poundland brings forward competition probe into 99p Stores deal The figures Underlying pre-tax profit hit £43.7m, an 18.6 per cent increase on 2014’s £36.8m. Total sales rose 11.9 per cent to [...]
Waitrose PYOO (“pick your own offers”) ups game in supermarket price wars with Aldi, Lidl and big four June 17, 2015 Middle England favourite Waitrose has upped the stakes in the supermarket price wars with what it's calling "game-changing" discounts. The latest salvo in the battle with Aldi, Lidl and the big four – and adding a new acronym to our lingo almost as good as BOGOF – is "Pick Your Own Offers", or PYOO, which is [...]
City and Gild: Premium brands should beware the temptation to “be more Aldi” June 17, 2015 So the head of the Boarding Schools Association, Robin Fletcher, has apparently encouraged his members to be more like Aldi, and cut their prices to offer a budget version in an effort to appeal to a larger market. If filling spaces were the issue for boarding schools, then this could be an approach you [...]
Co-operative Group to spend £125m slashing the price of fruit and veg in its supermarkets – including introducing the 39p cucumber June 17, 2015 The Co-operative has just drawn its battle line in the supermarket price wars, after it announced plans to spend £125m slashing prices. Read more: Aldi Shmaldi – How Bargain Booze is playing German discounter at its own game Its weapon of choice? The humble cucumber, the price of which will be slashed to just 39p, [...]
Aldi Shmaldi: Conviviality Retail’s Bargain Booze is playing German discounter at its own game June 16, 2015 Last week it was teachers, this week it's rival retailers. Aldi has suddenly become the brand to beat. Conviviality Retail – which runs Bargain Booze – has this week launched a head-to-head campaign with budget grocer Aldi, pitting its prices for big-label brands such as Carlsberg Export and Smirnoff against the supermarket's own label [...]
Big four supermarkets will keep getting squeezed says Moody’s June 10, 2015 The leading big four supermarkets are expected to lose another four per cent of their market share by 2020 to discounters Aldi and Lidl, as competition in the grocery retail market intensifies. A report published today by credit rating agency Moody’s predicts Aldi and Lidl’s combined market share will reach 12-15 per cent by 2020, [...]
Malcolm Walker’s many lives: How Iceland hopes to fight off profit slump June 10, 2015 Malcolm Walker has more business lives than a cat. He built his frozen food empire Iceland from a humble shop in Shropshire in 1970 into a £2bn turnover business 30 years later, before hitting a financial iceberg. Walker was forced to step down as chairman in 2001 after the Financial Services Authority launched an [...]
Sainsbury’s shares rise as Coupe insists store strategy is working June 10, 2015 SHARES in Sainsbury’s rallied yesterday as the supermarket chain insisted it was seeing “encouraging signs” of recovery, despite reporting its sixth consecutive quarter of declining underlying sales. Britain’s third-largest grocer said total sales fell 0.6 per cent, while sales at stores open more than a year fell by 2.1 per cent, excluding fuel, in the [...]
Sainsbury’s sales fall for sixth successive quarter – with 2.1 pc fall June 10, 2015 Sainsbury's sales have fallen again, showing the supermarket giant is yet to shrug off the challenges facing the big four. The figures: Like-for-like sales were down 2.1 per cent for the first quarter of 2015. Food deflation and a competitive market were blamed for the poor sales figures, which were down 2.1 per cent for the [...]