Booker becomes one of Tesco’s best-performing subsidiaries

The wholesale distributor, which is a subsidiary of Tesco, recorded a 12 per cent increase in like-for-like sales in the year to the end of February, one of the brightest spots in a period that Tesco executive Ken Murphy described as “incredibly tough”.

That 12 per cent increase brought Booker’s total sales to £8.7bn, of which £4.8bn was in retail with the bulk of the rest from sales to the catering trade.

In his comments on the overall Tesco results, which showed a rise in sales of 7 per cent to £66bn but a halving of pre-tax profit to about £1bn, Murphy singled out Booker for special praise.

Excluding tobacco, total Booker sales growth was 18.4 per cent.

The Tesco report also revealed that it opened two superstores, 50 Express stores, 18 One Stop stores in the UK, working with 451 net new Booker retail partners. Booker’s performance included success with the Jack’s product range, which Tesco described as “popular with our Booker retail partners” and came despite a fall in retail tobacco sales of 5.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, Booker has been expanding Jack’s own label range by 100 lines from March, adding more premium products such cake, frozen, grocery, crisps and snacks, soft drinks, confectionery and deli.

Three premium sausages will be added, sharing the same quality as Booker’s Black Gate catering range. Olive oil is also to be introduced. The expansion has brought the total number of available Jack’s products to more than 600.