Lidl invests £220M in UK store expansion programme

AU: Woolworths selling its chain Thomas Dux
Australia's largest supermarket operator Woolworths Ltd is looking for buyers for its upmarket Thomas Dux grocery stores, according to a Fairfax Media report, Reuters writes. It said that Woolworths was asking for between A$10M and A$20M for the chain of 10 stores after putting it up for sale earlier this year. Woolworths opened its first Thomas Dux store in Sydney in 2008. With high operating costs, the business only became profitable last year.

Greece's supermarkets and petrol stations are being bled dry
Greece's government shut the country's banks and restricted ATM withdrawals until July 6, to stop Greeks bleeding the banks dry — but now it looks like they're emptying petrol stations and supermarkets of their goods too, uk.businessinsider.com reports. The Guardian reported that there is "mayhem" in some of the supermarkets, including one in the country's "upmarket district above Syntagma Square." The newspaper said that "panicked buyers were snapping up everything in sight, not least staple foods such as sugar and flour."

Germany: Vegan products are now available at Edeka
Today Veganz entered into a new partnership with the Edeka chain who wishes to meet the demand of its customers by selling vegan products. Approximately 200 Veganz items will be available at Edeka in early July 2015. (source: veganz.blog.com - fructidor.com)

AU: Jeff Kennett tells Coles to pay $12m to suppliers
The former Victorian premier has ordered Coles to repay more than $12.3M to small food and grocery suppliers who were forced to pay extra rebates to join a new supply chain program, or fined for "crimes" such as late deliveries and spoilage in Coles stores, smh.com.au reports. About 4000 suppliers who are still participating in Coles' Active Retail Collaboration program will have their annual rebates reduced, and others will be allowed to leave the program entirely, saving "millions of dollars a year," Mr Kennett said.

French Carrefour opens 4 stores abroad
According to lesechosdelafranchise.com, Carrefour has opened four new stores: one in Alger, one in Oman and one in Dubai. UTIC, Carrefour’s exclusive partner in Tunisia, set up the 4,000m2 store in Alger. The Majid AL Futaim group was responsible for setting up the 5,500m2 space in Al Barka, Oman. The same group set up the opening of a 1,300m2 Carrefour Market in Dubai and a 167m2 Carrefour City in Al Fahidi metro station.

Russia: X5 opens two new distribution centres
X5 Retail Group has announced the opening of two distribution centres in the Voronezh Region, kamcity.com reports. The leading grocery retailer said that state-of-the-art logistics facilities in Ramon and Chernozemye are expected to strengthen ties between food producers and consumers from seven Black Earth Belt regions, helping to increase the volume of products from local suppliers.

India: Grocery to be 2nd most transacted e-comm segment in 1 yr
Online grocery shopping is expected to see the highest number of electronic transactions, after mobile recharge, within a year, according to data analysis by Internet-based payment facility provider PayU India, business-standard.com reports. "We are seeing many companies aggressively investing in online grocery shopping. Web portals like Big Basket, Grofers, Grocermax have cumulatively raised over US$65M to expand their business. We expect this segment to witness 0.5M transactions a day in 12 months from 30,000 at present," PayU India CEO said. "About 5% of the total transactions made in e-commerce in India on our platform are from the grocery segment. We see it rising to 35% in a year," Gupta said.

UK: Lidl launches £220m UK store expansion programme
The threat to the big four supermarkets from discount chains stepped up a notch on Friday as Germany's Lidl unveiled plans for a £220m expansion in the UK, theguardian.com reports. The company will open 20 more stores by the end of this year, taking its total to 620. It said the move would create a total of 2,500 jobs in the stores, at its headquarters in Wimbledon, south London, and at a distribution centre in Northfleet in the Thames estuary. The announcement came after the company spent £170m in the UK in 2013, opening 12 stores and creating 3,500 jobs. The privately owned firm reported sales of £3.3bn last year with a 20% increase in the last 12 months helping Lidl grab a 3.6% share of the UK grocery market.

UK food prices rising at slowest rate in decade
Food prices are rising at the slowest rate in a decade, due to increased price pressure from discounters Aldi and Lidl. Ten years of supermarket pricing show food inflation has been pegged back dramatically since the two German retailers, known for their cut-price established a foothold in the UK, scotsman.com reports. Between 2005 and 2010 - when the ‘big four’ supermarkets of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons increased their dominance - the 20 most popular branded groceries rose by £7.82 or 38%. But over the next five years, prices rose by the much lower amount of £3.43 or 12.16%. The increase coincided with a change in attitude to German discounters Aldi and Lidl, which more than doubled customer numbers in the past five years at the expense of the bigger stores.

Israel: Mega set to petition for protection from its creditors
The Mega supermarket chain will petition the court for protection from its creditors and for a creditors meeting, globes.co.il reports. Lawyers for Mega's owners, Alon Group, are considering the petition that will be filed. The decision to turn to the court comes in the wake of assessments that the chain will not succeed in reaching a financial arrangement with its suppliers, and that the latter are liable to cease supplying goods immediately, thus in effect causing the chain's collapse. Last Wednesday, the management of Alon Group held a meeting with the suppliers. The suppliers say that Alon Group CEO Avigdor Kaplan requested that for the next two months payments to them should be deferred by two weeks, and that payment of 30% of the supermarket chain's debt to them should be spread over five years.

US consumers increase amount of online grocery shopping
U.S. online grocery shoppers are upping the amount of grocery shopping they complete online, according to a new survey of 1,100 U.S. online grocery shoppers from Door to Door Organics, a leading natural and organic online grocer, virtual-strategy.com reports. Overall, shoppers indicated that an average of 19% of their weekly grocery shopping is currently done online.

US: Peapod Delivering farm-fresh produce straight to customers' doors
Peapod.com, the country's leading online grocer, is making it even easier to enjoy fresh and local seasonal produce by offering a new Peapod Local Farm Box. Customers will have the option of adding a box of produce from local farms to their virtual grocery cart, prnewswire.com reports. Developed in partnership with FarmLogix, a company that connects local farmers to businesses, Peapod's Local Farm Box is a convenient alternative to committing to a season-long Community Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) farm share.

UK: Convenience store owners spends in battle against supermarkets
Owners of convenience store owners have invested £162m of their own money in the past three months in the wake of changing consumer shopping habits, retailgazette.co.uk reports. In attempts to better meet time-poor customers’ needs, small food shop owners (75% of whom set up their stores as first businesses) are self-funding their stores. The findings come from research by the Association of Convenience Stores

Carrefour Drive opens in Beauvais, France
Following Leclerc, Auchan, Intermarché and Hyper U, Carrefour now has a click and collect point in Beauvais, reports leparisien.fr. The Carrefour Drive offers between 10,000 and 12,000 products. Carrefour invested €200,000 in the project, and local companies in Beauvais were used for the works.

Chinese JD.com to sell Australian fresh food
JD.com announced the launch of Australian Mall, a new channel on the company's JD Worldwide cross-border platform dedicated exclusively to selling authentic imported Australian products to customers in China, streetinsider.com reports. The company also announced cooperative agreements with Australia Post and Treasury Wine Estates as part of its Australia push.

South-Africa: Massmart to invest to help agriculture suppliers
As part of its takeover of Massmart in 2010, Walmart committed to investing US$8.2M in a supplier development fund to help support small agriculture suppliers, igd.com reports. As this process winds down, Massmart has said that it was aiming to switch its investment to the small-scale manufacturing industry, a development that keeps it in line with a South African government requirement to purchase at least 30% of goods from small and medium-sized enterprises and co-operatives.

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