Supermarket spending, April 2021 - Supplementary COVID-19 analysis

Additional data analysis of supermarket and grocery stores spending

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Released
3/06/2021
Source
Retail Trade, Australia, April 2021

Introduction

To enhance the understanding of the economic impacts of COVID-19, scanner data was used to conduct analysis on supermarkets and grocery stores spending.

The data presented is in original terms, and may differ from the data presented in the Retail publication. This is because scanner data is only collected from large providers and, to enhance this analysis, certain product types sold by supermarkets are excluded.  Please note, analysis of annual data has not been adjusted for the leap year in 2020.

Spending by product group

For the purpose of this analysis, supermarket products were split into three categories. Perishable goods contain fresh food items such as fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. Non-perishable goods contain food items with a long shelf life such as flour, sugar, canned fruit, canned vegetables, canned and dry mix soups, confectionary and long-life milk products. All other products contain non-food items such as cleaning products, medicinal products, toiletries and toilet paper.

Turnover fell for Perishable goods (-3.5%), Non-perishable goods (-6.8%) and All other products (-2.8%) in April 2021 compared to March 2021, in original terms.

Annually, Perishable goods rose 3.0%, Non-perishable goods 0.6%, and All other products 3.8%.

nb. Not adjusted for leap year.

Spending by city, and state and territory

Annual revenue percentage movements at the capital city, state and territory level are showing rises across most of Australia. Of the capital cities, Perth (7.9%) and Hobart (7.3%) recorded the strongest annual rises. For the rest of state and territory areas, Rest of Western Australia (10.6%) and Rest of South Australia (10.2%) recorded the strongest annual rises. Melbourne (-2.2%) and Sydney (-2.9%) were the only regions to record annual falls.

Monthly revenue percentage movements at the capital city, state and territory levels are showing falls across most of Australia, following rises last month. Of the capital cities, Brisbane (-6.6%) and Hobart (-6.0%) recorded the strongest monthly falls. For the rest of state and territory areas, Rest of Tasmania (-6.5%), and Rest of Victoria (-4.7%) recorded the strongest monthly falls. Rest of Northern Territory (3.8%) was the only region to record a monthly rise. Stronger weekly rises were recorded in the first and final weeks of April, which correspond with public holidays as well as lockdown restrictions which were re-instated in Greater Brisbane and Greater Perth.