Analysis of long-term market trends by Roy Morgan shows that Australia’s two largest supermarkets captured more than 50 per cent of Australia’s $13 billion+ fresh meat market between them in 2017.
Market leader Woolworths Group with a 26.5 per cent share, up 1.1 percentage points since 2016, and Coles Group with a 24.3 per cent share, up two percentage points, had a combined share of the fresh meat market larger than all other retail outlets including rival supermarkets ALDI and IGA, butchers, markets, other supermarkets and non-supermarkets combined.
Both Australian supermarket giants have enjoyed stronger growth in the fresh meat market over the past year than rival ALDI, which now has a 9.6 per cent share of the fresh meat market, up 0.9 per cent in a year – although all three have clearly taken substantial market share from traditional butchers.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says Australia’s increasingly competitive fresh meat market is squeezing the market share of the traditional Australian butcher:
“Unfortunately for butchers and markets, the decline in fresh meat market share appears to be accelerating, with butchers and markets now holding only 24 per cent of Australia’s fresh meat market share,” she said. “This represents a decline of more than three percentage points over the past 12 months – the largest yearly drop in fresh meat market share for butchers and markets recorded in the past decade.”
Ten years ago, butchers and markets held 32 per cent of Australia’s fresh meat market.
These results are from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey of more than 50,000 people per annum, including more than 12,000 grocery buyers.