The Coles supermarket chain has continued to narrow the gap in retail beef sales on major rival and market leader, Woolworths, latest monthly national retail survey data shows.
Neilsen Australia Homescan survey figures released today by Meat & Livestock Australia show that for the rolling quarter ended August 4, Coles further consolidated its recently-improved beef market share position, lifting a further 0.2pc to 26.7pc of all retail beef sales.
As can be seen in the graph published below, that continues a solid performance rise for Coles over the past four months, which has seen its share lift a hefty 3.2pc since the May rolling quarter.
Current beef retail share figures for Coles are the best recorded by Neilsen in at least two years.
The company has now closed to within 3.5pc of the retail beef share held market leader, Woolworths, after being separated by a share gap of up to 8.5pc as recently as May.
The closure has happened not only because of Coles’ improved sales, but also Woolworths gradual decline in market share. Woolworths beef share for the most recent rolling quarter was 30.2pc, the same as the figure reported a month earlier, but 2.5pc below where it sat in April (32.7pc). That trend comes off a very high base, however, as the company’s April figure was the highest achieved in well over a year.
The latest movements coincide with a renewed price discounting push among the large supermarket groups, evidenced by Coles current ‘Down, Down’ campaign spearheaded by 70s rockers, Status Quo, and customer loyalty programs linked to the Fly-buys program.
The latest result also underpins a longer-term trend in share gains by Coles, now 0.7pc better than the company’s current average Moving Annual Total (MAT), and 2.3pc better than the MAT figure a year ago.
Independent butchers continued to lose beef market share in the latest August rolling quarter, falling to 24.9pc, their lowest market share in at least two years. That suggests they are being squeezed by renewed red meat price wars among the big two retailers.
There was moderate change among the smaller retail stakeholders with the IGA chain rising 0.1pc to 7.5pc, Aldi Supermarkets steady at 6.1pc, and ‘other’ supermarkets (4.6pc) unchanged stable from a month earlier.
To a large extent, that means that Coles’ recent growth history is coming mostly at the expense independents and Woolworths.
In combination, the ‘big three’ retailers (Woolworths, Coles, independent butchers) were responsible for 81.8pc of all retail beef sales nationally during the August rolling quarter.
In other Neilsen survey results from August, the overall fresh meat category (made up of beef, veal, chicken, pork, lamb and minor proteins like seafood and turkey) experienced negative value growth of -0.5pc compared to a year ago.
Going against the trend, the beef segment (39.2pc of all meat, by value) is up 1pc from the June rolling quarter, and is now back to close to historically high levels seen a year ago, measured as a percentage of all meat protein sales, by value.
Again, Lamb experienced the strongest growth - its share was up by 0.6pc compared to last year. Lamb’s increase seems to be caused by falls in retail price that started in earlier months, however the latest survey (ended August 4) probably came too early to capture the latest aggressive round of lamb discounting active by major supermarkets. Next month’s survey may show a clearer impact.
Despite another drop in its price, chicken experienced the largest loss this quarter. It’s share was down by 0.4pc compared to 2011. Pork’s share has increased over the past few months on the back of some price drops, but compared its share remains steady on an annual basis.
Prices for respective protein remained largely stable compared to the previous rolling quarter figure.
Beef prices (measured as the average $/kg value of the items in the surveyed shopping baskets, not of the overall value of beef being sold in the retail marketplace) remained unchanged from a month earlier at $9.90. Lamb prices eased a further 10c/kg to average $11.50/kg, continuing a soft decline in price seen since January. As indicated above, that is being reflected in modestly higher lamb market share.
Chicken prices continued a long-term declining trend, averaging $7.20/kg, underlining its strong price-competitive position, while pork remained steady at $9.80/kg.
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