- Asda announces 2012 sales of £22.8 billion, up 4.5% year-on-year
- UK’s 2nd largest online grocer invests further in multichannel and new stores
- Click and collect development with same day delivery on grocery home shopping
Asda today [Tuesday 23rd April] reported a 4.5% uplift in total sales, including petrol, to £22.8 billion in 2012 - up from £21.8 billion the year before. The retailer pointed to its investment in holding down the price of essentials, increasing opportunities for customers to shop and putting money back in their pockets as key components of its success.
Building on the success of 2012, the retailer announced that it will invest over £700m of capital in 2013 into online, new and existing stores and its supply chain helping to create 2,500 new jobs across the UK. It also noted that while bricks and mortar stores are central to growth, the shape of its investment has shifted its focus to accelerating its multichannel business.
Andy Clarke, President and CEO of Asda said:
“I’m proud that in the continuing and very challenging trading environment we were able to increase total sales by 4.5% last year. This shows that we are continuing to get it right for customers.
“By focusing on their needs through accelerating our investment in the technology and infrastructure to make shopping more convenient, customers can shop for what they want, when they want it.”
Asda is Britain’s second biggest online grocer, enjoying success from double-digit year on year growth and increased demand from customers shopping online. As a result the retailer increased its home shopping capacity with the opening of a third purpose-built picking centre in Nottingham last month, creating more than 600 new jobs.
The 120,000 square feet centre has the appearance of ‘a store without customers’ and includes a team of bakers hard at work preparing fresh bread from 4am, a home-baked pizza counter producing bespoke pizzas, as well as offering customers extended delivery slots between 6am and 11pm and access to a product range of more than 25,000 items, with everything from fresh fish to local suppliers. Asda is also offering local businesses a special trade rate on deliveries.
Asda is also investing in Click and Collect facilities for George clothing and General Merchandise in all of its 568 stores and customers will be able to collect grocery shopping from almost 200 outlets by the end of 2013, including from stores and lockers at Asda petrol stations.
This is in addition to the Collect Plus deal announced in March, where customers can buy George and Asda Direct items online and collect or return them at more than 5,000 convenience stores and petrol stations in the UK.
Performance in the grocery Click and Collect business is outperforming expectations, with the format now accounting for four per cent of all grocery home shopping orders from a standing start in Autumn 2012. A new ‘drive thru’ Click and Collect facility in York is a world first – combining food and non-food collection orders in one place meaning a customer can pick up a barbeque alongside bananas, without leaving their car.
More innovation around Click and Collect, where customers can order online and collect from a store, is planned for the remainder of 2013, including ‘same day’ delivery on food grocery orders, another world first.
In the remainder of the year, the retailer will also open 10 new stores, including four new small format supermarkets, five superstores and one new non-food outlets. This is in addition to two stores that have already opened in 2013 in Coventry (Asda Living) and Larkhall, near Glasgow (Asda supermarket) that have already opened. The total new stores will together add over 340,000 square feet of net selling space in 2013.
Asda which has been voted Britain’s lowest price supermarket for 15 years, is part of the world’s biggest retailer Walmart, and currently employs over 175,000 people in 568 stores and depots across the UK. It is also the second largest supermarket in the UK. The news comes ahead of the publication of Asda’s Q1 results on May 16th.
Ends
Notes to Editors
About Asda Stores Ltd.
Founded in the 1960s in Yorkshire, Asda is one of Britain’s leading retailers. It has more than 175,000 dedicated Asda colleagues serving customers from 568 stores, including 33 Supercentres, 314 Superstores, 32 Asda Living stores, 187 Supermarkets, 2 standalone petrol stations, depots and seven recycling centres across the UK. Its main office is in Leeds, Yorkshire and its George clothing division is in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. More than 18 million people shop at Asda stores every week and over 99 per cent of UK homes are served by www.asda.com. Asda joined Walmart, the world’s number one retailer, in 1999.
###