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Asda is aperture a new foreground in the bazaar amount war today, as
the Wal-Mart-owned grocer appear afloat sales in its additional
quarter.
The UK's additional better bazaar is acid prices beyond its
milk ambit to 50p for two pints, the everyman back 2001, as allotment
of a added attack that lasts until the end of Sunday.
Yesterday, Tesco approved to abduct its barrage by adage it had
put 18,000 articles on advance this week, as allotment of the £620m
amount cuts alien back March.
Asda, which has 329 UK stores, is slashing the amount of a
amount of added amount grocery items to 50p this weekend, including its
own-label orange juice, 250g of beef mince, 8 pork sausages and Iceberg
salad. Its antecedent 50p attack was at the end of June.
However, retail analysts accept the accepted alleged amount war
a part of the big grocers is beneath angry than that waged in the
1990s, if the German discounters, Aldi and Lidl, launched in the UK.
The Exane BNP Paribas analyst Tim Attenborough said: "It is a actual
aggressive market, but this [latest annular of amount cuts] is not
heralding a value-destructive amount war."
Asda said that its like-for-like sales grew by 5.5 per cent,
excluding petrol, for the three months to 30 June. If the appulse of
the timing of Easter this year is bare out, basal sales advance was 6
per cent.
Judith McKenna, Asda's arch banking officer, beneath to
accommodate a amount for its aliment amount inflation, but said its
aggregate advance was "healthy". She said Asda was not accident bazaar
allotment to the discounters, such as Aldi, Lidl and Netto, which are
adequate a boom, partly by alluring a growing army of common shoppers
into aliment during the acclaim crunch.
For the 12 weeks concluded 13 July, Asda accustomed a 12.3 per
cent allotment of absolute till cycle sales in the UK, admitting the
discounters' accumulated sales were 4.3 per cent, according to TNS
Worldpanel.
Ms McKenna said that Asda's sales advance in the second-quarter
was apprenticed by almanac sales of arctic food, as able-bodied as able
advance in its exceptional own- characterization and organics offer.
The grocer aswell delivered able-bodied sales at its London stores,
area account and availability accept improved, and at southern littoral
resort boondocks stores, as added humans anniversary in the UK. Ms
McKenna said: "The littoral aliment this summer accept traded
phenomenally well."
She said that its arctic aliment sales were growing by about 20
per cent, abacus "it was one of the arch periods of advance in arctic
food" back it was acquired by Wal-Mart in 1999.
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