Grocery spend continued to slow in June, as sales increased by just +0.4% on the previous month due to the ‘monsoon’ weather experienced by the UK, according to Nielsen research.

Shopper

Nielsen said the cold and wet conditions in the past four weeks caused shoppers to hold back spend and purchase fewer items than they would during warmer weather conditions such as the UK experienced this time last year.

However, Lidl and Aldi continued to outperform the market in the 12 weeks to 15 June, while sales at the Co-op Group were ahead of those at the big four.

Over the 12-week period, Lidl and Aldi enjoyed sales of +15.2% and +9.4% respectively year on year, while the Co-op Group (+1.9%) remained ahead of Morrisons (-0.6%), Sainsbury’s (-0.8%), Asda (0%) and Tesco (0%), Nielsen said.

Nielsen’s UK head of retailer and business insight, Mike Watkins, said: “It’s clear that promotions, events and the vagaries of the weather have a big impact on supermarket sales. The summer trading season stretches 18 weeks from the first May bank holiday to the last week in August. In the first seven weeks of summer 2019, shoppers have so far spent £350m less in supermarkets. This equates to a 2.1% fall in value sales compared to the same time period last year.

“This means that for supermarkets to match the same level of sales as last summer, shoppers would now need to spend £26bn during the remaining 11 weeks. This looks a tall order as weekly growth is currently down, and we would need a sustained heatwave through to August, as we had last summer, just for the growth at supermarkets to stand still.”