Tesco Increases Share of Grocery Market Further

According to The Scotsman, Tesco's share of the UK's grocery market has now reached 31.8%. That means that the supermarket chain is even closer to controlling a third of everything spent in the UK on food, making a mockery of the idea of true competition in the market.

In most markets, competition is affected once one player has 25%. Before Tesco's share hits rises any further there surely must be effective action from the Competition Commission to reopen the market!

For those who consider this to simply be a case of good business, Tesco has been accused of the following in the past year...

• Shipping CDs hundreds of miles outside the EU to avoid paying VAT
• Selling meat products well past their sell-by dates
  
• Selling alcohol to children, and then getting local councils to pay the cost of prosecution
  
• Increasing opening hours despite local objections within months of opening stores
  
• Increasing the size of stores once construction has started
• Putting pressure on suppliers to reduce prices
• Exploiting migrant workers to pick vegetables
• Putting local stores out of business
• Ignoring local people
• Breaching planning laws

Not things that the average corner shop grocer can do! Today alone newspapers around the country are reporting that...

• 'Bakers, florists, opticians, grocers and sandwich shops in the immediate neighbourhood [of a new Tesco store in Oldham] have this week spoken out to say that since the store opened a month ago, the only change has been for the worse. Many fear that they face a bleak future – and possibly ruin.' (Oldham Advertiser)

• 'Global retailer Tesco will be reminded “it is not above the law” after Reading’s biggest branch was caught selling booze to an underage customer for the second year running'. (Reading Evening Post)

• '[Tesco] have got buying power that I don't have. I get a loaf of bread from my suppliers for 89p, they sell a loaf for 69p.' (Gavin Xavier, owner of Christin newsagents in Tooting, near the site of a proposed new Tesco, quoted in the Wimbledon Guardian)