Aldi Australia posted a 13 per cent increase in sales A$6bn in 2014 compared to 2013.
While Aldi’s share of Australia’s grocery market is still outranked by major retailers Coles and Woolworths, its sales grew almost three times that of Coles’ 4.6 per cent and Woolworths' 4.7 per cent.
“We’re very pleased with the progress. We had a successful 2014,” Aldi’s group general managing director Tom Daunt told Fairfax. “We have about 11 per cent share on the eastern seaboard … There’s probably a little bit more market share that we could obtain out of existing markets on the eastern seaboard.”
Speaking on broker UBS’s forecast that Aldi Australia’s sales could reach A$9.3bn in five years, Daunt said that Aldi could increase its market share to 15 per cent, challenging Coles and Woolworths, without dropping its reputation for discounted groceries.
'At the core of our business model is the need to offer the highest-quality product at the lowest price. It's a very dangerous territory to get into for a discounter to allow others to encroach on that area and that's certainly not part of our plan,” Daunt said. 'We will always select the lowest price we're able to afford to sell the product at, which is very different to the standard retail convention, which is to price products at the highest you're able to get away with.'
Aldi began operating in Australia in 2001, opening 27 new stores in 2014 to bring its total stores to 366.
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