In the past quarter, discounters Aldi and Lidl have only managed an 11.4 and 8.4 % turnover increase respectively in the United Kingdom. Even though their growth pace is the slowest in years, they still outperformed their major competitors.
Slowest growth since 2011:
Out of the UK’s so-called Big Four (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s), only Tesco managed to increase its turnover in the 3 months leading up to 6 November, namely 2.2 %.
This shows that Aldi and Lidl still manage to outpace their UK competitors, but their growth pace has slowed down and was even the discounters’ lowest since 2011. Several analysts estimate the like-for-like turnover remained the same compared to last year or even dropped slightly
In the meantime, there is still a price war ongoing between the classic chains and the discounters, because the former want to compete with the latter, who in turn do not want the price gap to become smaller. This race to the bottom has lowered prices 0.5 % across the board, but that is the smallest deflation since October 2014. Partly owing to the Brexit, analysts think there will again be a price inflation in December.
