Lidl sales growth year-on-year in Great Britain 2014-2020

In the first quarter of 2019, Lidl’s sales grew almost six percent on the British market. This was the lowest growth seen by the German supermarket since 2014. No clear pattern is visible from the growth rates which frequently exceeded ten or even 15 percent in the past years. At the end of the year the company saw an uptick in its growth rate that continued into 2020.

Lidl and the Schwarz Group

Lidl is a subsidiary of the German Schwarz Group. The discounter is the biggest contributor to the revenue of the family owned Schwarz Group. Lidl is deliberately not named after the Schwarz family. The goal was probably to avoid any relation to the term black market (Schwarzmarkt in German). Lidl was founded in 1973 and opened its first store in the UK in 1994.

The company on the UK market

It is not only sales but also revenues that have seen an increase over the past years in the UK. Continued growth would likely see Lidl surpass a turnover of half a billion British pounds on the UK market in the coming years. Lidl has the 7th largest share on the grocery market and since the beginning of 2018 the company operated over 700 stores in the UK.