Shoprite has once more increased market share in South Africa. The South African supermarket group, which owns the Shoprite, Checkers and Usave chains has seen double-digit sales growth across its three key retail brands.
The group has reported sales growth of 13.9% for the half-year ended 31st December 2023, up to R121.1bn ($6.46bn). It has now gained market share in its core South African supermarket business for 58 months. In its core Supermarkets RSA division sales grew by 14.6% (6.3% like for like). LiquorShop sales grew by +25.2%. Exclusing the Massmart acquisition, LiquorShop sales increased 17.4%.
The premium format, Checkers and Checkers Hyper, delivered the best growth, 13.7% sales growth. The online delivery service Checkers Sixty60 increased sales by 63.1% over the six months to end December 2023. The core Shoprite brand increased sales by 13.1%. With the inclusion of the 51 Cambridge stores acquired from Massmart Holdings, increased sales by 13.2% USave increased sales by 12.3%.
Over calendar 2023, Shoprite Group opened a net number of 369 stores. In the six months to end December 2023, the company added 197 new stores to total 3,543 stores.
Shoprite is positioning itself as the friend of consumers and winning the battle against both Massmart and Pick n Pay. It says it is subsidising the sale of 1.5m R5 ($0.27) products each week and now has 2.8m customers buying entry-level private label. Interestingly, private label participation is almost identical at Checkers (20.6%) as it is at Shoprite (20.5%).
South African retailer Woolworths has also released its results for the first half of its 2024 fiscal year, the 26 weeks to 24th December 2023. For Woolworths Food, sales growth for turnover and concessions was 8.4% (turnover) and by 7.2% on a like-for-like basis despite the retailer emphasizing challenging market conditions with pressures on consumer spend and daily loadshedding. However, underlying product inflation for the period averaged 9.1%.
Sales grew by 8.6% in the last six weeks of the period, delivering positive volume growth because product inflation eased to 7.9%. Woolworths added 3.3% more floorspace over the period and online sales increased by 46.6%, now accounting for 5.1% of Woolworths Food’s total sales in South Africa.
Woolworths Fashion, Beauty and Home saw turnover and concession sales grew by 2.2%, and by 1.5% on a like for like basis. Sales growth in the last six weeks of the period improved to 3.8%on the back of a strong Black Friday and festive season trade. Online sales grew by 26.9% and contributed 5.4% of South African sales.
