DUNNES STORES IS the top supermarket in Ireland according to the latest share figures from Kantar Worldpanel.

This is only the second time Dunnes has managed to reach the top spot, having first held this position in November last year. It now has a 22.7% share of the market.

David Berry, director at Kantar Worldpanel said, “This will be welcome news for the retailer but there should be some concern that its sales growth has dipped to 3.6% – the lowest level seen in more than a year.

The slowdown in overall market growth has led to even stronger competition between the major supermarkets and it’s tight at the top of the market share table – only 0.3 percentage points separate Dunnes Stores, SuperValu and Tesco.

Aldi continues to set the pace as the fastest growing retailer. Shoppers are now visiting 8.7 times every 12 weeks, compared to 8.1 times for the same period last year, and this has helped to increase sales by 6.3%.

Aldi now captures 10.6% of the grocery market, ahead of the 10.3% from last year.

Meanwhile, almost three quarters of Irish shoppers visited a Lidl store in the past 12 weeks, having encouraged another 26,000 new consumers through its doors the retailer has posted positive sales growth of 2.8%.

It also found that retailers didn’t sustain the same level of growth achieved over the Christmas period. Grocery sales growth fell to 3%, down from 4.6% last month.

The supply issues affecting fresh produce in the last few weeks have contributed to the dampening of the overall market.

Berry added, “Southern Europe might be suffering from continuing rainfall but it’s having a substantial impact on Irish shopping baskets.

Courgettes, cauliflower and spinach have all seen volume sales drop by at least 20% while a host of other categories including lettuce and cabbages have been affected to a lesser degree.

Grocery prices are 0.7% higher than they were this time last year – which for the average shopper amounts to an extra 17 cents per trip.

These findings are based on Kantar Worldpanel Ireland data for the 12 weeks to 29 January 2017.

Kantar Worldpanel Ireland monitors the household grocery purchasing habits of 5,000 demographically representative households in the Republic of Ireland. All data discussed in the above announcement is based on the value of items being bought by these consumers. 

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