Upmarket UK retailer Waitrose said its own-label Essential line has helped boost sales in the three months since the range’s launch.


The budget range, which comprises of 800 lines in white packaging, will cover 1,400 staple grocery products by October.


A nationwide advertising and marketing campaign to support the range helped sales leap by more than 17% year-on-year to reach almost 13% of total sales, the company said today (22 June).


Sales of lines featured in the group’s TV and press ads increased “substantially”, the grocer said, with fish fingers in particular up by nearly 25%, frozen chips up by 40% and sales of teabags growing by more than 41% year-on-year.


Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King has claimed that his company has managed to lure customers from Waitrose and Marks and Spencer in part through its own private-label campaigns.

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Waitrose declined to comment on whether the launch of Essentials had succeeded in winning customers back from Sainsbury’s.

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