CarlsbergBritvic-SDR-Convenience-v20 - Flipbook - Page 30
Welcome
Sustainability
Category overview
CONVENIENCE
CATEGORY OVERVIEW
SOFT DRINKS:
THE CUTTING EDGE
OF CONVENIENCE
Once again, soft drinks have proven their
remarkable power in UK convenience retail.
Sales have surged by 3.6% (or £185.8m)
to £5.3bn.1 Volumes have grown by 1.9%.2
The UK’s 49,000 convenience stores3 sold
a staggering 2.5bn litres of soft drinks in
2024,2 enough to fill 991 Olympic-sized
swimming pools!
This comes against a backdrop of ongoing
growth for the wider convenience channel.
With the financial pressures of recent years
easing for many, increasing numbers of
people have been visiting convenience
stores more often, helping to drive 4.2%
revenue growth to £49.4bn in 2024.3 New
store openings (store numbers grew by
2.4%3) and innovative ranging (particularly
in meal deals, hot food counters and brand
partnerships) have played a key role in
channel growth.3
Tectonic changes in ownership are also
reshaping the convenience channel. Asda’s
£2bn acquisition of forecourt operator, EG
Group in October 20234 – as well as its
£600m purchase of 129 forecourts from the
Co-op a year earlier5 – has seen around
500 stores previously operating under the
EG, Spar and Co-op converted to the Asda
Express brand so far.4
1 Nielsen IQ, Total Convenience, Total Soft Drinks Britvic Defined, Value sales, 52WE 04.01.25 Note: Convenience is defined as stores which
are less than 3000sqft. This definition will differ to thate cited in the Category Overview as it will include grocery convenience stores, symbols,
independents, forecourts and convenience multiples which meet that criteria.
2 Nielsen IQ, Total Convenience, Total Soft Drinks Britvic Defined, Volume sales, 52WE 04.01.25
3 Lumina Intelligence Market Sizing Insight & Analysis, June 2024
4 https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/asda-to-convert-acquired-eg-group-forecourts-to-asda-express-by-next-summer/685166.article
5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62735141
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CONVENIENCE CATEGORY OVERVIEW
