Dunnes still leads in battle of the supermarkets

Boom time for supermarkets as a result of Covid.  Picture: Leah Farrell

Irish supermarkets are the out-and-out retail business winners of the Covid-19 economic crisis, with record grocery sales set to jump close to €13bn this year amid the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Figures provided to the Irish Examiner by market researcher Kantar show the supermarkets made over €12.8bn in sales over the 52 weeks to the end of November, which includes the €1bn in sales during the latest level 5 lockdown, and before Christmas 2020 which is widely anticipated to top all records.

The supermarkets had sales of almost €11.2bn in 2019 and more than €10.8bn in 2018, according to Kantar. The figures suggest that Irish grocery sales will have soared by over €2bn during this pandemic year compared with 2018.

As essential retail services, the supermarkets remained open and their sales boomed as people who were forced to stay or work from home had few other ways to spend their money, with many sit-down restaurants and cafés, pubs, fashion retailers, and general retailers closed down for weeks on end since March.

Our latest #GroceryMarketShare figures show take-home grocery sales growth in Ireland accelerated to 16.4% during the 12 weeks to 29 November 2020. Irish shoppers spent over €1 billion in the grocery aisles during November alone. Read more: https://t.co/P3oj1NpMji

— Kantar UK & Ireland (@Kantar_UKI) December 14, 2020

The figures show the grocery sales boom will be a huge boost for the top five supermarkets – Dunnes, SuperValu, Tesco, Aldi, and Lidl – which between them increased their market share to 90% of all the grocery sales in the Republic.

The rest of the market is fought over by franchise grocers, a few independents, and some cross-border sales.

In the latest 12 weeks ahead of Christmas, Dunnes had the largest share of the grocery sales, at 22.1%, just ahead of Musgrave's SuperValu on 22%.

Tesco had 21.5% of all grocery sales in the period, while Lidl and Aldi secured market shares of 12.5% and 12%, respectively.