Woolworths has increased its lead over Coles in the fresh food category, leaving Aldi in third position and independent fresh food retailers struggling to compete, according to Roy Morgan’s latest research.
Woolies gained market share by 1.0 percentage points to 27.4 per cent, compared to a gain of 0.6 percentage points for Coles, bringing the retailer to 24.6 per cent.
Aldi showed the second biggest gain, up 0.8 percentage points to 9.8 per cent, coming in third place behind the big two but well ahead of IGA on 6.0 per cent.
“The battle to be Australia’s ‘fresh food’ leader has heated up in recent years as Coles has mounted a challenge to the long standing ‘fresh food people’ at Woolworths. Although Coles has generally closed the gap on its rival over recent years, Woolworths has again increased its lead over the last 12 months. These big two now capture 52% of Australia’s $39 billion fresh food market, up from 50.4% 12 months ago,” said Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan
“The disruption to Australia’s supermarket duopoly caused by the entrance of new competitors including Aldi, and in the near future Kaufland, Lidl and Amazon Fresh, is driving the current market leaders Coles & Woolworths to step up their game and increase their market share ahead of this increased competition. We have already seen that this intense competition among the majors is squeezing out the smaller specialty retailers, particularly butchers and fruit shops who are losing the most market share.”
Fresh Food1 Market Share – Supermarkets v Non-Supermarkets. Source: Roy Morgan
Supermarkets increased their dominance of the category now holding 71.4 per cent of the market, up from 69 per cent, this time last year.
Australia’s total fresh food market, which is made up of meat, fruit and veg, bread, deli and seafood, now has an annual retail value of $ 38.8 billion.
Fresh Food1 Market Share – Stores where purchased. Source: Roy Morgan
Roy Morgan’s report found that non-supermarkets are struggling to compete in this category. These fresh food retailers now account for just 28.6 per cent of this market, a major decline from 12 months ago when their share was 31 per cent.
Butchers experienced the biggest decline of the smaller fresh food retailers, down 1.1 percentage points to 7.0 per cent. Fruit shops dropped 0.7 percentage points to 6.7 per cent.
