Centra in €30m expansion as sales stall

By Geoff Percival

Centra is to spend another €30m expanding its store network this year, bringing to €50m the amount it has spent developing its business since the start of 2017.

It follows a €20m expansion last year which added 20 stores to the Musgrave-owned convenience store chain. The new plan will see a further 30 stores open this year, 100 existing ones refurbished and a 400 jobs created.

The company has more than 450 stores and employs over 11,000 people. However, while it increased sales by 3% to €1.59m in 2016, its 2017 sales were flat. Nevertheless, Centra managing director Martin Kelleher said he was happy with the performance, “in what is an extremely competitive market”.

“Our decision to reposition Centra in response to changing consumer trends, with customers increasingly choosing healthy options has paid dividends,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tesco was the top performer of the UK’s four largest supermarket groups over the past 12 weeks, posting sales growth of 2.6%, although all four again lost market share to Aldi and Lidl.

Asda increased sales 2.2%, data from research group Kantar Worldpanel showed, with Morrisons also on 2.2%, while Sainsbury’s saw a 1.5% rise.

Growth at German Aldi and Lidl came in at 16.2% and 16.3%, boosting their market shares to 6.9% and 5% at the cost of the top four players.

UK grocery inflation stood at 3.6% for the period, Kantar said. Kantar is scheduled to publish its latest figures for the €11bn Irish grocery market next week.

Meanwhile, Morrisons has selected Dublin-based cloud technology company Kooomo to manage its new online clothing brand Nutmeg.

The Irish company will take over the management of Nutmeg’s digital operations, including e-store management and merchandising, search engine optimisation and social media marketing.

Kooomo chief executive Ciaran Bollard said that the company hopes to drive market adoption of the ‘click and collect’ form of shopping — which is only used by around half of the UK’s main retailers — through its partnership with Morrisons.