In the first quarter of the year, the price paid for everyday grocery items rose by its slowest pace across Europe in six years, according to retail performance data from Nielsen.
According to the data, in Q1, FMCG value sales rose by just 0.7%, the smallest increase since Q1 2010 (0.5%), whilst volumes rose 0.8% year-on-year. As a result of this slowdown, grocery retailers saw a 1.5% increase in takings at the till – the lowest figure for nearly three years (1.2% in Q2 2013).
“Europe was dragged down this quarter by significant falls in prices being paid in two of the big five markets – Germany and Italy,” said Nielsen’s European director of retail insights Jean-Jacques Vandenheede. “Lower prices are being driven by fierce price competition among the retailers and falling production costs, mainly due to lower energy prices.”
Of the main European markets, Spain posted the highest level of growth (+3.1%), followed by France (+2.2%). Overall, across the 21 European countries measured, Turkey had the highest growth in takings at the tills (+9.7%), followed by Poland (+4.8%) and Hungary (+4.6%).
Germany saw a decline (-0.4%), as did Greece (-6.1%) and Finland (-2.8%).
Vandenheede added, “The picture across Europe is one of disparity, almost chaos. There is no consistency in performance between countries and no one big trend. As far as the FMCG sector is concerned, Europe is not behaving like a unified market.”
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
