Booker Wholesale has become one of Tesco’s best-performing subsidiaries, according to its latest annual financial report published earlier this week.
The wholesale distributor, which is a subsidiary of the UK’s largest retailer, recorded a 12% increase in like-for-like sales in the year to the end of February.
That 12% increase brought Booker’s total sales to £8.7bn, of which £4.8bn was in retail, with the rest from sales to the catering trade.
Excluding tobacco, total Booker sales growth for the year was 18.4%.
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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.
In his comments on the overall Tesco results, which showed a rise in sales of 7% to £66bn but a halving of pre-tax profit to about £1bn, Tesco CEO Ken Murphy praised Booker.
He said: “We continue to target growth through making Tesco the most convenient place to shop. This year, we have opened 91 stores across the [Tesco] group and are serving over 450 net new Booker retail partners.
“Booker delivered its strongest year ever, helped by an outstanding catering performance as even more customers benefited from its unbeatable choice, price and service,” Murphy commented.
He also said the supermarket has been “very robust” with suppliers as it looks “to maintain as low a cost price as possible.”
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%.
