Dunnes, SuperValu close Tesco gap

Latest grocery market share figures show that Dunnes was the big winner over the past 12 weeks, while SuperValu has almost drawn level with Tesco as market leader.

The data from consumer insights agency Kantar Worldpanel cover the three months to the beginning of March. They show a healthy combined year-on-year 2.4% rise in sales for all the big supermarket groups.

However, on an individual basis, the big mover has been Dunnes, which increased its market share by over 1% on the same period last year, to stand at 23.4%, and which saw a 6.5% jump in the value of over-the-counter sales, helped largely by its recent ‘shop and save’ campaign.

“Dunnes has successfully encouraged its customers to buy more, growing the number of trips where €100 or more is spent by an astonishing 25%,” said Kantar director David Berry. “One point to note is this time last year, Dunnes was struggling, with sales falling by almost 5%, so while performance is positive this year, the benchmark for comparison is relatively low.”

Elsewhere, the German discounters, Lidl and Aldi, continued to show impressive gains.

Their combined market share has gone from 14.5% to 15.7% year-on-year, with each seeing sales rise by almost 11% in the latest period under review.

Aldi has an 8.1% share of the grocery market (up from 7.5% this time last year), while Lidl commands 7.6% (up from 7% last year).

SuperValu had another good period. Its till sales grew by 0.4% on an annualised basis, and while its market share is slightly down on the same time last year, it now controls 24.9% of the sector, 0.1% behind Tesco, which saw a further 3.7% decline in sales and was once again the only player to see a fall at the till.

However, according to Mr Berry: “Tesco remains Ireland’s largest supermarket, with one in every €4 spent on groceries going into its tills. However, this is lower than this time last year, with sales down by 3.7%.

“The main driver of this sales decline does appear to be changing. Shoppers had been cutting back the number of products they bought there. Now, they are buying a similar number of products, but at a lower price,” he said.

In Kantar’s early February update, Tesco showed a 2% year-on-year drop in till sales, which coincided with the company batting away rumours that it was set to shed hundreds of jobs at its Irish operations as part of a wider international cost- cutting round.

The company failed to deny that jobs may go here, but did confirm that it has no plans to close any of its Irish stores and called the news of downsizing speculative.