A round-up of supermarket news and gossip
An adage in life is “never go back”. M&S takes no heed. A decade ago Sir Richard Greenbury, then chairman showed that he was prepared to abandon the company’s customary caution. Over the following years M&S would expand into Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, India, China and Australia. Then it all went wrong as M&S drew in its horns. The current CE Stuart Rose now has plans to take them back across the water. It currently has 250 franchised stores overseas. The policy could also involve the opening of wholly-owned stores.

Asda was counting the cost of the price war between Britain’s supermarkets when it announced a dip in quarterly profits. Asda began a price war in the summer and recently announced a second £150m wave of cuts in time for the Christmas run up.

John Lewis Partnership, the employee-owned retailer said sales at its 185 Waitrose supermarkets rose 4.3% to £76.7m in the week to November 3rd.

Morrisons offered more evidence of a revival saying a revamp of its stores and a high –profile advertising campaign had helped sales growth. Like for like sales growth excluding petrol were up 3.7% in the 14 weeks to November 4th.

Tesco could face a Competition Commission battle over plans for a £400m development with Everton Football Club on Merseyside. A property company is threatening to refer Tesco to the competition authorities after accusing it of “abusing” the planning process. The supermarket giant wants to build a 115,000ft2 superstore next to the proposed site of the new stadium near Kirkby, which has a population of only 42,500. The number of other stores planned for the site is 50. A shop which asks customers to bring their own packaging and carrier bags has opened. The organic food store, Unpackaged, charges 50p for a bag.

Shoppers who buy own-label food rather than well known brands are saving £20bn a year, a survey recently revealed.

Some £2bn was wiped from the market value of J Sainsbury after the Qatar Investment authority abandoned its £10.6bn bid blaming the global credit crunch.

Britain’s farming industry could be reduced to a memory “within a generation” the church of England cautioned. The church criticised the British obsession with cheap food and accused supermarkets of putting farmers’ livelihoods at risk. The Church calls for an independent ombudsman to be appointed to put an end to practices such as labelling foreign food as British and arbitrarily slashing prices of vegetables.

The four big supermarket retailers could be forced to sell up to 110 parcels of land and 40 stores between them under proposals to increase competition in local markets. This is as the result of the preliminary findings of the watchdog. In a similar vein the Commission intends to curb the building of “Tesco Towns”.

Another view put forward is that supermarkets in Britain have been a public good, giving people more of a choice of life for less.

Food retail sales in all leading European countries are growing at a historic rate with Hungarian and Czech Republic markets leading the way in mainland Europe, says a new report.

Over the first decade of the 21st century, data analyst Mintel predicts a 74% rise in food retail sales, from E783bn in 2000 to an estimated E1,063bn by 2010. During this time, sales will triple in Hungary and double in the Czech republic. To take the whole of Europe, France has the largest food retail sector, worth E190bn in 2005 followed by the UK on E156bn and Germany on E135bn.

Asda is planning to report football shirt manufacturers to the Office of Fair Trading unless it agrees to supply the Group with shirts to sell through its stores.

Leclerc is to increase its Eastern European presence and take advantage of the demand for cheap private label brands. It intends to open three stores a year in Poland for the next ten years.

GEMINI