South: Southern Co-op's successful Christmas

Southern Co-op is celebrating a successful Christmas trading period following a 6% increase in like-for-like sales across its stores in the three weeks to January 6, with total sales increasing by 8% in the same period. 

During the Christmas week itself the Society, which trades from 209 stores across the south of England, grew its like-for-like convenience store sales by 12.2% as trade built steadily in the run up to Christmas Day.

Mark Smith, chief executive of Southern Co-op said: "We are delighted with these Christmas trading results. We set ourselves some particularly tough targets this year to deliver the best possible service to our customers at Christmas. Our colleagues rose to the challenge brilliantly as we met significantly more of our customers’ festive top up shopping needs than last year, in a fiercely competitive market. These very positive results also reflect  the continued development of our Co-op own brand product range and increased Southern Co-op social media activity in the run up to Christmas."

The society also reported total year-on-year sales growth of 6.5%, with a 3.2% like-for-like increase, in its convenience store business for the 13 weeks ending January 6.