Tesco has reported resurgent sales in the run-up to Christmas, prompting calls for the supermarket’s continued growth to be brought under control.
Excluding the impact of its new stores, Tesco’s sales surged 5.7% in the seven weeks to 7 January. With new stores included, sales jumped 11.5% on the year, helped along by a robust performance in international sales.
The company’s feat, however, has sparked further concern along the high streets, where shop owners feel the supermarket giant’s chain of convenience stores, Tesco Express, and out-of-town retail centres are pushing them out, according to the Forum of Private Business (FPB).
With 185 new development sites in its pocket, the FPB believes that Tesco’s evolution is an experiment gone too far.
“Tesco has become the King Kong of the high street,” said FPB chief executive Nick Goulding. “It is too powerful, too greedy and too dominant.
“These Christmas figures are yet more evidence to snap the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) out of its inertia. The OFT needs to order a competition commission inquiry into the dominance of Tesco and the supermarkets.”
In particular, Goulding urged the OFT to investigate the impact of Tesco’s move into the convenience store sector, a market in which he says 20,000 shops have been forced to close down each year since 1997.
Recent figures have put Tesco’s share of the grocery market at 30.5%, with a distant second at 16.7%.
