BRITISH SUPERMARKET giant Sainsbury, which has 10 stores in Northern Ireland, has reported its “best ever Christmas performance”. Sainsbury’s defied gloomy economic conditions to deliver a 4.5 per cent rise in like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, in the 13 weeks to January 3rd.
Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury, said the group had continued to grow customer transactions.
In the seven days before Christmas, the British supermarket group recorded a total of 22.6 million transactions. Mr King said Sainsbury’s busiest trading day on record so far was December 23rd last year.
“We also delivered the highest ever trading performances for both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Our online home delivery service delivered a record number of orders in the week before Christmas, contributing to growth of 27 per cent for the full quarter,” Mr King added.
He said Sainsbury’s own-brand products were showing strong growth in the current credit crunch climate, while the organisation was delighted with the performance of its own-label clothing range, Tu. He said the firm would keep investing in price promotions to continue its progress.
The group’s stores in Newry, Derry and Armagh, enjoyed a major boost from cross-Border customers spending euro in the run-up to Christmas this year.
Sainsbury had to recruit more than 550 additional season workers in the North over the busy Christmas period to keep pace with demand in their stores.
The group has made no secret of its delight that it has managed to attract huge numbers of consumers from the South to travel north to shop at its Border stores. But Sainsbury said it has also noticed a growing trend where consumers from the South were prepared to travel to other stores across the North.
“In the past couple of months with the increasingly competitive euro rate offered by Sainsbury’s, southern shoppers are also travelling to our other northern stores such as Sprucefield and Dungannon.
“Sainsbury’s at Holywood Exchange in Belfast has noticed a significant uptake in euro sales since furniture superstore Ikea opened.”
The group said its Newry store had now jumped to pole position within Sainsbury as the highest trading store for alcohol, baby products and confectionary.
The British retail giant does not disclose specific financial details relating to individual stores.
But it has been suggested that sales at its Newry store may have grown from an estimated £500,000 a week to more than £2 million a week by the close of 2008.
