Welcome to our ‘weekly news in brief’, covering the latest from UK retailers and manufacturers.
Retail News in Brief
Tesco is highlighting an improved range of ‘Clubcard Prices’ in a fully integrated campaign including a series of three short films. The campaign, created by BBH, will feature on TV, out-of-home, print, radio, social and digital, with each of the three shorts debuting over consecutive weeks.
Almost 35,000 workers at the Co-Operative will receive a pay rise after the group’s pre-tax profit rose by a third in the first half of the year. The UK’s sixth-largest grocer said revenues grew 7.6% to £5.8bn as customers shopped closer to home and ate out less during the pandemic.
Aldi is continuing its move into the online channel with the launch of a trial of its first click & collect service to its staff in the UK. The discounter plans to extend the pilot to customers in the coming weeks. The retailer stated that if it continues to prove successful, the trial will be extended to the public across more of its 894 UK stores in the near future.
Waitrose is reportedly in talks to buy online meal delivery startup Mindful Chef. It's reported the supermarket chain is among a number of parties, including Nestlé, interested in acquiring the subscription food box business, which is expecting full-year sales to more than treble to £50m in 2020. The “unprecedented increase in sales since the coronavirus outbreak” of recipe box customers has sparked a “great deal of interest” in the business.
Manufacturing News in Brief
Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I has reduced the on-pack price of some of its ‘drink-later’ range to help retailers cater for increased consumption of soft drinks at home. The channel director for wholesale at the company commented: “With 74% of total soft drink sales coming from price-marked packs, plus a growth of 8% in drink-later formats, a competitively priced drink-later range is essential for retailers.
Heinz has announced a five-year partnership with charity Magic Breakfast to help feed the one in five UK children who are currently at risk of going to school hungry. The charity runs morning clubs for those in need. Heinz has created a new campaign to highlight the issues of child hunger and food poverty and will provide 12 million free breakfasts as part of its support.
Sipsmith, a pioneer of the craft gin boom, will become the first global gin partner of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships from next year. The British firms joins a prestigious group of official suppliers, which includes Pimm’s. Whilst there was no Championships this year, Sipsmith is working on a special limited-edition Wimbledon inspired gin for 2021.
L’Oréal’s Garnier brand has teamed up with carbon balancing app Almond on a reforestation project which aims to plant some 400,000 trees by the end of October as part of the brand’s ambition to achieve net-zero emissions. The initiative will see the brand plant a tree for every product purchased in Asda stores.
Other News in Brief
Worries that Britain is at risk of deflation grew after the annual rate of inflation fell to 0.2% in August, down from 1% the previous month. The effect of the government’s discount scheme for restaurants in August may have contributed up to 0.5 percentage points of the drop. It is the lowest reading since December 2015.
The UK government has been announced plans to end tax-free sales on goods such as electronics and clothes at airports after the UK leaves the EU after January 1, 2021. The move has been described as ‘yet another blow’ to the travel industry.
Convenience stores are enjoying a strong surge in sales of snacks and sweets, driven by the reopening of schools. Many wholesalers and convenience retailers have experienced an uptick in key impulse lines for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus crisis in March, The Grocer understands.
New England-wide measures which could see hospitality businesses forced to shut for a short period are being considered by the UK government to try to slow a second surge of coronavirus cases. At a meeting on Wednesday night, the government's chief scientific adviser and medical officer predicted another serious outbreak of the disease.
