Grocery sales rise as online shopping gains ground

Take-home grocery revenues advanced 14.3% over the 12 weeks to May 17, the fastest rate since 1994, according to market monitor Kantar.

The rise in such goods was accompanied by a fall in sales of food-on-the-go, snacks and drinks, which would ordinarily have totalled £1bn.

In the last four weeks of the period, online grocery sales were up 75% year on year as almost a fifth of UK households placed orders.

All big grocers, and independent retailers combined, generated a sales rise over the 12-week period.

Sales at grocery pureplay Ocado, whose joint venture with Marks & Spencer goes live in September, achieved a 32.5% increase in revenues to claim market share of 1.6% compared to 1.3% a year ago.

Iceland’s market share climbed to 2.4% share of the market for the first time in 20 years, after sales increased by 28.6%.

The Co-op’s sales rose nearly 31% to take its market share to 7% versus 6.1% a year ago.

While Lidl’s sales rose 16.5%, Aldi only achieved 10.4% putting its growth behind that of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, which achieved 12.7%, 12.5% and 12.5% respectively.

Kantar head of retail and consumer insight Fraser McKevitt said: “Online shopping now accounts for 11.5% of all grocery sales, gaining more ground and attracting more new shoppers in 2020 than the channel has in the previous five years.

“The retailers have done a brilliant job of reacting to a sudden spike in demand by increasing their online capacity, and it’s meant that nearly one in five British households ordered groceries online in the most recent four weeks, 1.6 million more than this time last year.”