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News
Aldi to launch online wine service
Aldi has announced that it is to launch an online wine service delivering wine by the case as it revealed record sales of almost £7 billion last year.
The supermarket chain, now the fastest-growing grocery retailer in the UK, said it will begin selling wine by the case online “from early next year”, offering customers home delivery and collection from third-party locations.
In the past year the company has been attempting to attract new, higher-spending customers in-store, introducing 150 premium and “Specially Selected” lines including its “Exquisite Collection” of wines. More than 1,000 bottles of wine from the Aldi Exquisite Collection are sold per hour, with year-on-year sales up 40 per cent.
Earlier this year the company launched a new range of “fine” wines priced at £9.99 – twice the average bottle price for wines sold in the supermarket – in a bid to attract shoppers who might usually buy their wine at Waitrose and M&S.
Aldi will sell all of its in-store wines on the internet and some wines will only be available online.
The company’s new online wine service will be rolled out as part of an e-commerce drive which the company hopes will bring the brand to thousands more consumers.
Matthew Barnes, CEO of Aldi UK & Ireland, said: “Our launch online is another exciting chapter in our story. This will enable us to introduce the Aldi brand and some of our best-selling, best-quality and best-value products to thousands more customers across the UK.”
The news comes as Aldi announced group sales had increased to £6.89bn in 2014 from £5.27bn the previous financial year – an increase of 31% and the equivalent of £31m in extra sales revenue every week during the year.
The business – which opened its first UK store in 1990 – has more than doubled its sales in the past three years alone. It is now the UK’s sixth-biggest grocer.
Aldi currently operates 598 stores in the UK and employs 28,000 people. The company plans to open a further 65 new stores in the course of this year.
The drinks business recently reported how the Aldi brand had become more valuable than Tesco.