Record sales of £1.6bn a Christmas gift for Aldi as budget supermarket hails its best ever festive season
Share:
Aldi hailed its best ever festive season as sales hit £1.6billion in the run up to Christmas. Premium own-label products and seasonal items helped to push the German discount supermarket chain’s sales up 3.4 per cent in the four weeks to December 25.
But analysts noted that Aldi increased store space by between 3 per cent and 4 per cent during the year, meaning each individual shop did not necessarily sell more. And festive shopping failed to save the High Street from a grim 2024, the latest figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed.
Total sales for the whole year were up just 0.7 per cent and non-food sales, which include items such as clothes and homeware, fell 1.5 per cent compared to the year before. Retailers are bracing for more pain this year as Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s tax raid and an inflation-busting minimum wage increase will force them to hike prices, cut jobs and slash investment in stores.
Christmas cheer: Premium own-label products and seasonal items helped to push Aldi’s sales up 3.4% in the four weeks to December 25. But Aldi said it would buck the trend as it pledged to offer better deals than its rivals. Competitors have introduced Aldi price match schemes to tempt back shoppers who have switched to the budget grocer.
Morrisons – which Aldi replaced as the UK’s fourth-biggest supermarket in 2022 – started the year by extending its price match scheme to 500 products. Aldi UK chief executive Giles Hurley said: ‘As we look to the new year, which for many will mean the prospect of living costs rising again, many families will be nervous about what 2025 holds.
