Retail and consumer goods industry news

Musgrave Group has reported sales of €4.9 billion for the year ended 31st December 2012, up 10.5%, with profits before tax up 3% to €72 million.  Group performance was underpinned by 13.5% growth in its core Irish market, with sales up to €3.1bn, boosted by a full year's contribution from Superquinn, as well as record sales in both the Supervalu and Centra retail brands. 'Winning in the New Wor...

Boots has teamed up with Weetabix in the launch of a new ‘pay-by-picture’ initiative, which enables customers to purchase a breakfast snack. Boots partners with Weetabix to launch “Pay-by-Picture” scheme Boots has teamed up with Weetabix in the launch of a new ‘pay-by-picture’ initiative, which enables customers to purchase a breakfast snack. Picture purchasing replaces currency Health ...

Asda has announced that it is investing £700m of capital into its business, concentrated in major improvements to its online offer, new stores and supply chain. Same day Click & Collect launched Asda has revealed that it is to trial a same day collection service later this year, with customers able to collect their order from stores. In addition, the retailer plans to roll out Click and C...

Bestway has announced a significant enhancement to its support package for its symbol group Best-one, with the launch of an in-house solution to supply the full range of chilled, fresh and frozen products to meet all the needs of its retailers in these categories. Provides direct control of range pricing and deliveries Previously these categories have been supplied by third parties direc...

Japan's FamilyMart targets over 1,000 stores in the Philippines in ten years, according to local press reports.  First store opened earlier this month Having announced its entry into the Philippines in late 2012, FamilyMart opened its first store on 7 April 2013 in the City of Makati, located in Metro Manila.  The store offers around 1,400 products, including food-to-go.  300 stores ...

Kantar Worldpanel retailer share data, for the 12 weeks to 14 April 2013, indicates that the UK grocery retail market grew at 3.6%, a slight slowing on the 3.9% seen in the previous period. The Kantar measure of inflation showed the rate of price increases slowed to 3.8% indicating the rate of volume decline has slowed, though still marginally above the level of market growth. ...

Thailand's CP Group has acquired Dutch SHV Holding’s shares in Siam Makro, with plans for the remaining shares to be completed in June, for the total value of THB 188.88bn (USD 6.6bn). Re-establishing the connection with Siam Makro CP All Group co-founded Siam Makro with SHV Holdings in 1988, but subsequently sold its shares. Following divestments in the late 1990s, the acquisition of a 64....

Pick n Pay has reported turnover growth of 7.1% for the year ended 3 March 2013, to USD6.5bn, with gross profit up 5.3%. 'We failed to turn sales into sufficient profit' Despite the sales and profit growth, Pick n Pay feels this performance is not up to its standards. The retailer sold more product and served more customers during the year, however heavy investment in the business improv...

Frozen food specialist Iceland has outlined its store opening plans for the year and confirmed its intention to re-enter the online market "soon". 40 stores to open in 2013 Following strong recent trading, Iceland has confirmed that it sees opportunity to build further scale with 40 stores planned for this year. The retailer has benefited from budget conscious shoppers valuing their focus on ...

SPAR has become the latest UK symbol group to step up its focus on the forecourt sector, with the launch of a fully branded site format, providing SPAR branding across both fuel and store offers. The biggest symbol in the forecourt sector With almost 700 affiliated stores located on forecourts SPAR has a bigger presence in this sector than any other UK symbol group, though retailers opera...