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The United Nations food agency’s world price index rose in April for the first time in a year, but is still some 20 per cent up on a record high hit in March 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 127.2 points last month against 126.5 for March, the agency said on Friday. The March reading was originally given as 126.9.

The Rome-based agency said the April rise reflected higher prices for sugar, meat and rice, which offset declines in the cereals, dairy and vegetable oil price indices.

“As economies recover from significant slowdowns, demand will increase, exerting upward pressure on food prices,” said FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero.

The sugar price index surged 17.6 per cent from March, hitting its highest level since October 2011. FAO said the rise was linked to concerns of tighter supplies following downward revisions to production forecasts for India and China, along with lower-than-earlier-expected outputs in Thailand and the European Union.

While the meat index rose 1.3 per cent month-on-month, dairy prices dipped 1.7 per cent, vegetable oil prices fell 1.3 per cent and the cereal price index shed 1.7 per cent, with a decline in world prices of all major grains outweighing an increase in rice prices.

“The increase in rice prices is extremely worrisome and it is essential that the Black Sea initiative is renewed to avoid any other spikes in wheat and maize,” said Torero, referring to a deal to allow the export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea.

In a separate report on cereals supply and demand, the FAO forecast world wheat production in 2023 of 785 million tonnes, slightly below 2022 levels but nonetheless the second largest outturn on record.

“(The) 2023/24 prospects for rice production along and south of the equator are mixed, largely due to the regionally varied impact of the La Niña event,” FAO said.

FAO raised its forecast for world cereal production in 2022 to 2.785 billion tonnes from a previous 2.777 billion, just 1.0 per cent down from the previous year.

World cereal utilisation in the 2022/23 period was seen at 2.780 billion tonnes, FAO said, down 0.7 per cent from 2021/22. World cereal stocks by the close of the 2022/2023 seasons are expected to ease by 0.2 per cent from their opening levels to 855 million tonnes.

Fine-dining restaurant meal delivery platform Providoor, founded by celebrity chef Shane Delia at the start of Covid-19, has been forced to close its doors and is likely to be plunged into liquidation.

The shock closure leaves dozens of staff out of a job and high-end restaurants across Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra without the popular home delivery service.

Investors and administrators behind the meal delivery business were working overnight to rescue the company – which was cash flow positive and had only recently raised millions of dollars in new funding – but the decision by one backer to retrieve their investment looks to have sunk Providoor and forced it into immediate liquidation.

It is expected Providoor’s 15 employees will be told this morning that the company was closing, despite the best efforts of founder Mr Delia and other high-profile investors in the company such as the co-founder of employment website Seek, Andrew Bassat, and its chief executive, former eBay boss Tim Mackinnon.

It is also unclear what will happen to the huge number of Providoor vouchers customers are holding and if they can be redeemed.

Providoor had quickly established itself as a high-end restaurant meals delivery service in the weeks following the first pandemic lockdowns in Melbourne in 2020 and soon spread to Sydney and Canberra where it sold meals prepared by well-known premium restaurants for people to enjoy at home.

Top restaurants that used Providoor as their meal delivery service included Mr Delia’s Melbourne eatery Maha where the idea began and other restaurants backed by celebrity chefs including Supernormal, Rockpool, Gwen, Spice Temple, Grossi, Three Blue Ducks, Chiswick, Xopp, The Fold and dozens of other popular establishments.

Providoor was the brainchild of well-known chef Shane Delia who kickstarted the meal delivery business in late-April 2020 in Melbourne as a response to the sudden Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and lockdowns which saw in-house dining banned in restaurants for an extended period.

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the closure of Providoor, a business borne out of the very worst days the hospitality industry has ever seen,” Mr Delia said.

“While today is a very sad day, I am proud of Providoor and what it has achieved. When people kept using Providoor after social restrictions were lifted, it showed us that it was a really good idea. I just wish it had been given the opportunity to work through the challenging economic conditions, the same facing so many in the restaurant and hospitality sector right now.

“Sadly the Providoor story comes to an end. I want to acknowledge the team, the advisers and our valued restaurant partners who all worked so hard to make Providoor a success.”

Mr Delia, a chef and restaurateur, came up with the idea two days after the cancellation of the 2020 Melbourne Grand Prix after he was forced to send his restaurant staff home due to the restaurant closures.

The owner of well-known Melbourne restaurant Maha had spied a gap in the market where meal delivery services such as UberEats were servicing fast-food and other basic restaurants but that many consumers were looking for a high-end meal experience from their favourite premium eateries.

Since commencing operations, Providoor has made more than 1.2 million meals deliveries and became a major player in Australia’s meal kit sector with 70 restaurants on its platform delivering tens of thousands of meals a week.

Cashflow positive and eyeing off an expansion into Brisbane and the possibly overseas, in November 2021 Providoor went to the market for a selective capital raise seeking between $3m and $15m to fund international expansion plans.

It is believed Providoor had over $5m in the bank when one of the investors exercised a contractual caveat to claim those funds back and despite drawn out negotiations and attempts to save the business this week and which went late into Thursday night it has been tipped into liquidation.

When Mr Delia spoke to The Australian in November 2021 on the appointment of a full-time professional CEO for Providoor, he was upbeat about the huge opportunities for the expansion of the fine-dining meal delivery platform that delivered high quality restaurant meals to people at home.

“We have ambitions to be a global delivery platform and so we need a global player, we want to create a world class team.

“I’m a chef, I’m a restaurateur, I’m a founder of Providoor and my skills set is based on customer experience and relationships.”

Vitasoy, one of the earliest brands to introduce soy milk to the Australian market, recently found itself in the centre of a corporate kerfuffle between two global food and beverage giants that created headlines.

The company’s Hong Kong parent company Vita International blindsided Australian dairy giant Bega in October by suddenly announcing it was exercising its right to acquire Bega’s 49 per cent stake in the plant-based milk company, a joint venture between the two struck up in 1999.

However, local chief executive David Tyack is confident not much will change as a result of the new ownership restructure.

But Tyack is hoping to make a splash in other ways. Vitasoy will have to pull off something shy of a brand reinvention if it is to overtake key competitors in the soy milk market – Vitasoy’s “heartland” – against popular rivals Bonsoy, So Good, PureHarvest and Australia’s Own.

And then there is the broader challenge of soy milk’s declining popularity in the face of gathering momentum behind oat milk, which industry leaders (Tyack included) believe will one day overtake soy and almond.

The chief executive, who has led Vitasoy’s Australian operations since September 2019, is under no illusions about the challenges the brand and the business face.

“We were late to the party and we’re trying to play catch-up,” Tyack said of almond milk. Vitasoy introduced an oat milk product 16 years ago and enjoys market leadership in supermarkets but not in cafes. Since Tyack joined the company four years ago, he’s watched the oat milk business expand tenfold in a strong signal that oat, not soy, is key to the future growth of the brand and its stable of products.

Developing brand equity will be Tyack’s biggest challenge. Vitasoy, backed by the $2.7 billion listed parent company, is a well-known brand in Hong Kong, China and other Asian markets, but it has struggled to develop the same currency among Australian consumers despite establishing a local presence 25 years ago.

“We got some work to do to make sure we can still compete with the new, shiny hip people on the block, too,” Tyack said.

“We think there’s value in that master brand for us, even though it includes the word ‘soy’, as being a trusted and known brand.”

The plant-based beverage business has enjoyed high single digit growth over the past few years, according to Tyack, but Vitasoy will have to pick up the pace if it is to hold its own against a competitive landscape and create demand in a declining category.

“We have to be at that level of growth. Otherwise we’re falling away with relevance and [lose] market share.”

The profitability of Vitasoy’s Australian operations is slipping. Its latest annual report lodged to ASIC reveals profits after income tax for the 2022 financial year was $3.7 million, down from $4.2 million in 2021.

Yet, there’s a reason why Vita International paid Bega $51 million to claim full ownership of the company. Despite the market headwinds, Vitasoy Australia punches above its weight within the Vitasoy business itself. Mainland China represents the majority (60 per cent) of Vita International’s turnover, followed by the Hong Kong market at 25 per cent. Australia takes bronze with 8 per cent.

“We’re the most developed Western market for the group,” says Tyack. “We also lead in some other ways.”

Vitasoy Australia has been expanding its plant-based products outside of milk and has found success in its soy yoghurt range, sold in Woolworths, and a range of ready-to-drink bottles of coffee and chocolate with plant-based milk.

The local operation, which has a manufacturing site based in Wodonga, is also a production powerhouse: it exports products back to Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and the Middle East.

But Tyack is devoting most of his energy to making a splash Down Under.

“We recognise that with the influx of global brands, new entrants, you’ve got to keep pace with what the sensory experience is. We’re constantly in internal comparisons with new offerings,” he says.

“Are we at the marketplace with our service, price and quality offer? If we’re not, reformulate.

“We know we’ve got some room to grow in improving our soy offer ... Bonsoy is a very good milk coffee offer ... We’ve got room to improve our almond offer ... There’s still room to improve the oats offer, too.”

Australia’s biggest private convenience store operation, 7-Eleven, is up for sale and could deliver the two families who own the franchise chain a multibillion-dollar payday.

“The Withers and Barlow families have decided that the time is right to review options for the future ownership of the business with a view to setting it up for future growth and success,” Russell Withers said on behalf of the 7-Eleven shareholders.

The chain was started by the billionaire businessman Withers and his late sister, Beverley Barlow, in the 1970s. It had grown from a single store in suburban Melbourne in 1977 to become one of Australia’s largest fuel and convenience retailer, with a network of about 750 stores across Victoria, NSW, ACT, Queensland and Western Australia, Barlow said.

The sales process comes one year after the group paid about $100 million in a class action settlement with franchisees after an investigation by this publication and the ABC’s Four Corners program uncovered evidence that the convenience store chain was engaged in systemic wage theft and doctoring of payroll records.

The chain was also forced to pay back more than $173 million to workers, although former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission boss Allan Fels, who previously headed the repayment panel, said that it did not reflect all the unpaid wages.

After the settlement last year, chief executive Angus McKay said 7-Eleven was pleased the matter had come to an “acceptable resolution”, and added the company had also invested $50 million in systems to prevent wage theft, and training for franchisees.

7-Eleven Holdings chairman Michael Smith said in a statement on Monday that the sales process was at an early stage and was expected to take months.

“7-Eleven has an unrivalled brand and convenience footprint in the attractive fuel and convenience market in Australia,” he said.“The business has great momentum and a compelling strategy for growth across convenient food, the continued transformation of our total merchandise offer, digital and format innovation, and new stores. With such a strong platform in place, the shareholders have decided that the time is right for new ownership of the business to oversee the next phase of our growth and development.”

The company was not providing any further details of the sales process, which has commenced, but a listing on the ASX is considered unlikely given the state of the sharemarket, meaning a trade buyer is the most likely option.

While no one is currently offering a valuation of the privately owned business, a sale could yield billions for the owners, based on recent transactions.

Last month, ASX-listed Viva Energy acquired South Australian fuel and convenience store business OTR Group for $1.15 billion. OTR has 174 integrated fuel and convenience stores in South Australia.

7-Eleven is the third-biggest convenience store operator in Australia behind Viva and Ampol, according to RBC Capital. It owns 250 stores, with the remaining 500 consisting of franchise operations. Integrated fuel and convenience stores account for 612 of its outlets with 192 directly owned by 7-Eleven.

A slow start to seasonal winter sales is affecting growth in Big W’s apparel category in the third quarter of FY23, despite overall sales growth of 5.7%.

The discount department store reported total sales in Q3 increased to over $1 billion, with a 4-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2%.

Homewares, leisure and toy sales recorded the strongest gains, offset by more subdued growth in apparel.

While eCommerce sales declined 1.9% to $91 million, store sales grew 6.5% to $955 million in the quarter.

This was driven by an increase in comparable transactions of 6.8% as customers returned to shopping in store more frequently. However, this was somewhat offset by a decline in items per basket.

Sales growth moderated through the quarter after cycling the COVID-driven impact in the prior year.

Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said inflation in many areas remains "frustratingly elevated" with plans to provide customers with greater value in their shopping baskets.

This includes leveraging own and exclusive brands, its Price Dropped program and personalised Everyday Rewards member offers across its portfolio.

“Our current focus is on continuing to improve our customer experience, especially value for money and product availability, and we remain cautiously optimistic that Woolworths Group is well-placed to navigate and respond to the current trading challenges successfully for all key stakeholders – our customers, our team, our suppliers and community partners, and our shareholders.”

Big W has already leveraged sales across MyDeal, which was acquired by Woolworths last year.  

Entrepreneur Irene Falcone has ruled out buying beauty e-commerce platform Nourished Life, which she founded in 2011, back from collapsed cosmetics empire BWX, which has listed Nourished Life and another online retailer for sale.

Falcone founded Nourished Life as a blog before it became an online marketplace dedicated to natural and clean beauty products, and sold it to BWX in 2017 for $20 million.

However, the troubled parent company is now seeking buyers for Nourished Life and eco-friendly marketplace Flora & Fauna in a move that will swiftly shrink its stable of brands, while it also scrambles to offload its stake in celebrity cosmetic lines Go-To Skincare and Purely Byron.

But Falcone said BWX had done such a poor job of operating Nourished Life that she would not consider repurchasing the platform, a move that would have echoed make-up mogul Zoe Foster Blake’s pole position to buy Go-To Skincare back at a bargain-basement price.

“When you shopped at Nourished Life, you knew every single ingredient was clean, checked, had complied with this amazing matrix of ingredients policies. Since I left, I’ve seen ... a whole bunch of rubbish there,” she said. “Why would I pay money for it?”

“I wouldn’t want to buy it back for that reason. It’s just tarnished now.”

KPMG’s David Hardy, Gayle Dickerson, James Stewart and James Dampney have been appointed as receivers and managers handling the day-to-day operations of Nourished Life and Flora & Fauna, together known as BWX Digital. They are now eliciting “urgent expressions of interest to acquire or recapitalise” the platforms’ assets and operations.

“BWX Digital comprises Nourished Life and Flora & Fauna, two of Australia’s leading e-commerce platforms operating multi-category portfolios of eco-friendly, natural and organic, toxin-free, health, wellbeing and lifestyle products,” KPMG said in a statement.

The sale of the e-commerce platforms marks the third and fourth business that BWX, itself in voluntary administration, is offloading following the high-profile and likely return of Go-To to Zoe Foster Blake, and the collapse of Elsa Pataky-founded cosmetics line Purely Byron in March. BWX owns 47 per cent of Purely Byron, which has appointed administrators to find a new owner.

BWX’s remaining brands are Sukin, Andalou and Mineral Fusion, the first two of which are sold through pharmacy and supermarket retailers Priceline, Woolworths and Coles.

“BWX Digital is also in voluntary administration, meaning interested parties can consider a sale as a going concern, a recapitalisation or restructuring of the business through a Deed of Company Arrangement [DOCA],” KPMG’s statement said.

Spanning skincare, make-up, eco-friendly home and baby products, food, health and pet merchandise, Nourished Life and Flora & Fauna sell a combined 590 brands and nearly 13,000 products, and together made net sales of $32.5 million in the 2022 financial year. The brands have a combined 115,000 customers considered “active” and 337,000 loyalty program members.

The hasty sales process will last for barely 48 hours, with expressions of interest closing at 5pm on Friday.

The two sites appear to have ceased trading – customers have been barred from making purchases and the checkout process has been blocked.

“We’re sorry but our checkout page is currently unavailable. We are working to get it back up and running as quickly as possible,” says a banner on Nourished Life’s website. “If you need anything else from us, please contact our lovely customer care team.”

The Flora & Fauna website permits users to add items to their shopping cart, but posts a similar message when attempting to check out.

“Checkout currently unavailable,” users are told. “In the meantime, please feel free to continue browsing our website and adding items to your cart or wishlist. Rest assured that your items will be waiting for you when our checkout page is back online.

“Keep an eye on the main page for updates. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this time, and we hope you have a lovely day!”

Some social media users have posted comments under Nourished Life’s latest Instagram post querying when the checkout process will recommence.

While KPMG have been appointed manager and receivers of the two platforms, representing secured creditors, FTI Consulting have been appointed by the BWX board as administrators.

Coles and Uber Eats have teamed up to launch what they say is Australia’s largest on-demand grocery-delivery service, operating within the Uber Eats app.

Customers in Melbourne will be the first to be able to buy Coles’ products via the Uber Eats app from nearly 40 locations. During the upcoming months, the retailer will extend the service to 500 stores across the country.

To use the service, customers need to tap the ‘Grocery’ button in the app and select from a range of groceries, including fresh meat, dairy and pantry staples. Delivery progress can be tracked in real-time.

Orders placed on the app will be packed and delivered by a delivery person using the platform.

Coles’ GM of digital operations & ventures, Claire Pallot, said the partnership offers “a fast, reliable, and affordable option” for getting fresh produce and groceries delivered.

“Customers can continue to enjoy great value and quality produce they find at Coles, but with the convenience of on-demand delivery through Uber Eats.”

Lucas Groeneveld, Uber Eats’ regional GM of retail for ANZ, said the expansion will “supercharge” the variety of groceries already available on the app.

Online customers will also benefit from a last-mile delivery option from Coles’ Liquorland which will be rolled out in the coming months.

The Australian business of the global Mars conglomerate has increased sales of its chocolate bars by about 18 per cent since 2020, and expects a new paper-based wrapper for the flagship Mars bar to add momentum.

The paper-based wrapper on the product is being rolled out through supermarkets led by Woolworths and Coles, and petrol and convenience store outlets, with Australia a pioneer ahead of similar moves in the rest of the Mars empire.

Mars is one of the world’s largest consumer companies. It is privately owned by the US-based Mars family and generates annual sales of $US45 billion ($66.3 billion).

Mars Wrigley Australia chief financial officer Duncan Webster said the group’s Ballarat factory in country Victoria, which produces about 88 million chocolate bars annually, had been the focus of heavy investment to bring about the change. He said the shift away from plastic-based wrappers would remove about 360 tonnes of plastic from the product’s supply chain. “It’s the first in the Mars world,” he said.

Mr Webster said it was too early to tell whether inflation in raw material inputs in Australia had moved past its peak.

“It’s really difficult to actually call that,” he said. There were many moving parts in the supply chain and still too much uncertainty about inflationary aspects. Mars Wrigley also operates a factory at Asquith, in the outer northern suburbs of Sydney, that makes chewing gum and mints.

Mr Webster declined to forecast where the company thought official interest rates might be headed in Australia, but said the chocolate bar and confectionery market in Australia was historically resilient in economic downturns. People still wanted a small “treat” in tougher times. “Our products are still very much seen as a treat,” he said.

The Ballarat plant, which employs about 400 people, has had almost $100 million of upgrades and capital spending in the past three years. The shift to paper-based wrappers was just a small component of that.

Back to the future

The plant makes three big chocolate bar brands. Mars is the biggest seller which 42 million bars sold annually in Australia, followed by Snickers with 36 million and Milky Way with almost 10 million. Production has lifted by 18 per cent from 2020 when the group sold about 74 million bars.

Mr Webster said supermarket sales make up a substantial chunk of sales in Australia, while sales in the “on the go” segment in petrol stations and convenience stores was also an important market.

There is also a “back to the future” element to the wrapper change; the original Mars bars which hit the market in the 1930s had paper wrappers. Packaging giant Amcor has worked with Mars Wrigley for almost three years on the development of the new paper wrappers.

The Mars business also has a large pet care and pet food business in Australia with brands including Pedigree, Whiskas and Purina.

The Mars businesses in Australia produced annual revenues of $1.68 billion in 2021, its latest set of financial statements lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show. This compared with $1.66 billion in the previous year. The Mars group in Australia made a profit after tax of $136 million in 2021, up from $107 million.

Mr Webster said the position of chief financial officer across the corporate sector was increasingly becoming more broad, and had shifted away from being a “number cruncher” compared with two decades ago.

“You’ve got a unique position to be an enabler,” he said. While CFOs still made hard financial decisions, they had substantial strategic input across the group.

Fast food operator Restaurant Brands says it is pushing through price increases at stores around the globe as inflation continues to eat into margins at its KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchises.

The Auckland-based business, which runs more than 480 food outlets across Australia, New Zealand and the US, told investors on Monday that first-quarter sales were up by 12 per cent to $NZ308.6 million ($461.3m) compared with the same time last year.

The fast food giant’s sales growth was backstopped by price increases in some markets and by the addition of 12 new stores across the group’s network. At the same time, the business warned that inflation was still having an impact on its bottom line.

“Worldwide inflationary pressures continue, albeit at a lower rate. While the company continues to implement price increases in response to these increased costs, margins remain under pressure,” the company said in an update filed to the ASX.

Restaurant Brands runs KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Carl’s Jnr in New Zealand, as well as KFC and Taco Bell stores in Australia and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in the United States.

The group’s New Zealand stores had a 9.2 per cent jump in sales to $NZ129.4 million, driven by price increases and easing of pandemic-related restrictions in NZ last year.

Sales in Australia were up by 15.5 per cent to $67.9 million, as sales in shopping centres and inner-city locations recovered to close to where they were pre-COVID.

Stores in California were weaker, declining by 4 per cent on a same-store basis for the quarter due to customers being more conservative with their spending, and “shifting to value-oriented menu and promotional items”, the company said.

Analysts have been cautious on quick-service food retail over the past few months over fears that consumers are eating out less and trading some of their fast food spending for making meals at home.

Shares in pizza giant Domino’s have declined by close to 22 per cent year-to-date, with the stock plunging in February after the company revealed it didn’t get the balance right when it increased the price of menu items in the face of inflationary pressures.

The most recent grocery price tracking data from investment bank UBS shows that while the price of many common fast-food ingredients is normalising, products still cost about 10 per cent more than at the same time last year.

Dairy product prices jumped 17 per cent in the March quarter compared with the prior corresponding period, while chicken prices were up 14 per cent and beef up by 2 per cent compared with the March quarter in 2022.

Australian Bureau of Statistics retail spending figures suggest that while retail spending has been flat at the start of this year, food spending has continued to grow steadily. Australian consumers spent $13.8 billion on food retail in February 2023, up 0.2 per cent compared with January.

Restaurant Brands shares closed the trading day flat at $6.38.

Aldi is counting on shoppers returning to the German discounter as the rising cost of living pushes Australians to its more affordable grocery range, and suppliers begin to reduce the frequency of price increases.

The discount supermarket aims to be between 15 per cent and 25 per cent cheaper than larger rivals Coles and Woolworths but, like them, its prices have been forced up by producers and wholesalers across the board.

Last year there were more than 2000 out-of-cycle price increases, but the rate of supplier requests has slowed, and some cost inputs are normalising, Aldi managing director for commercial and buying Jordan Lack told The Australian Financial Review.

The 2000 price increases “is far and away the highest rate we’ve ever seen”. “Some of those cost inputs are definitely normalising,” he said.

“The international freight rates have definitely come back significantly over the last three months. So, there’s some internationally sourced products where there’s some benefit.

“But, unfortunately, there’s cost increases which are still coming through on some commodities and other factors. I think it’s going to be a bit of a category-by-category proposition over the next bit of time.”

He confirmed research by UBS that found fresh food price inflation is volatile, and susceptible to weather events which could squeeze supply.

Mr Lack would not disclose top-line sales in the last quarter of 2022, but said they were up 13.2 per cent year-on-year, driven by changing customer behaviour, as customers switched some or all of their spend to Aldi from other retailers and existing shoppers upped their basket size.

Aldi’s retail prices rose by about 7.8 per cent on average last year, with its cost inflation sitting at about 9.2 per cent. Mr Lack said this showed Aldi was absorbing some of those prices hikes.

That is in line with 7.7 per cent food inflation at Woolworths, and 7.4 per cent at Coles in the December half.

Asked if that implied the estimated profit margin was around 8 per cent last year, Mr Lack said that was “wildly inaccurate”, and less than half that figure.

“I think our profits will be below that of our competitors as well,” he said. “We have shareholders which have a really long-term view to the business. And that allows us through the good times, and the bad, to make sure that we set our business up for sustainable growth in the future.”

Mr Lack said IRI market data showed Aldi had about 9.5 per cent market share, achieving a 1 per cent gain over the past 12 months. Aldi’s share plateaued at about 10 per cent to 12 per cent before the pandemic struck.

Its business was tested by COVID-19 and international shipping challenges. Consumers also sought convenience over price, and favoured neighbourhood stores over frequenting shopping centres during that period.

But Mr Lack said more shoppers were coming to Aldi more frequently, estimating a cumulative $3.1 billion in annual savings.

“Those customers who are more loyal customers are shopping more, buying more with us seeking out value,” he said.

An average family of four that shopped at Aldi saved about $2400 a year on their grocery bill, according to PwC data. The PwC analysis looked at the price gap between Aldi and competitors using Aldi’s internal price data and the retailer price comparisons for major competitors.

Aldi has 580 stores in Australia and has pushed into Western Australia and South Australia. It also operates a corner-store format in inner-city locations.

Mr Lack said Aldi planned to add to its network in coming years, including “experimentation with the corner-store format”, and refurbishing existing sites, but had no plans to bring the US-based Trader Joe’s brand to Australia.

Local boss Tom Daunt will be elevated to global joint managing director of the German supermarket business next month. The Australian operation will be led by Anna McGrath and Marietta Schorn.