Hard discounters gain market share as retail milk price falls

Published 13 May 15

Hard discounters such as Lidl and Aldi have gained more of the GB milk market, growing their share from 6.2% to 7.0% in the year to March. This appears to be off the back of the latest retail “milk price war”, with many retailers using milk and other British staples as loss-leaders to attract consumers. As a result the average retail price for pasteurised* milk fell 7.6% to 55ppl.

This heavy discounting caused GB’s spend on pasteurised* milk to drop 3.2%. However, volumes sold were actually up 4.7%, due to consumers shopping for milk more often and buying larger quantities.

 Retail graph 13 May 15

*Kantar Worldpanel data for pasteurised milk excludes filtered, UHT, soya and sterilised.