FDBusiness.com

Grocery retailers and FMCG manufacturers in Northern Ireland will now have access to weekly granular sales data across supermarkets and convenience retailers, courtesy of Nielsen’s Scantrack service launching in the country. The Scantrack scanning service uses actual EPOS data from retailers to quantify total store sales every week by SKU across the major food and drink retailers in Northern Ireland, including the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury, SuperValu, Centra, Eurospar, Spar and Vivo.

The service shows the value of the Northern Ireland FMCG market¹ rose 3.5% to £3.7 billion over the last year², with the supermarket multiples accounting for 73% of sales and the convenience retailers 27%. The multiples saw sales grow 3.7% year-on-year while the convenience sector saw a 3.1% rise.

“Scantrack has effectively been the currency for grocery sales in both GB and the Republic of Ireland for years but now it will help Northern Ireland’s retailers and manufacturers to see how they’re performing, so they can improve and grow their business,” says Matt Clark, Nielsen’s commercial director in Ireland. “Central to this is the granularity of the EPOS data, which is provided on a weekly basis across both the multiples and the convenience channels.”

¹Excluding independents, specialist retailers, ethnic stores and discounters

²52 weeks ending 15/7/2017