Appleby Westward, the South West Spar distributor, is investing up to £600,000 in extending its wholesale price reduction initiative for another year.

The company invested £650,000 last year on reducing the cost of milk and beer, wines and spirits lines.

Managing director Mike Boardman (pictured second right) told Appleby’s annual tradeshow in Exeter that in its company-owned stores alone, the EDLP (Every Day Low Price) initiative had seen milk sales increase by 10% in the year, with wine sales up 37.5% and beer by 8.5%.

Appleby will now follow this up with a new rebate offer on Spar brand products and ranges of protein and free-from products, which is potentially worth £600,000 to participating retailers over a year.

“Retailers need to cut back the space devoted to non-productive and declining areas and bring in new categories of Spar brand, along with protein and free-from products,” Boardman said.  

“Free-from is a £772m market with 20% growth and we have got to get in it. Similarly, more and more consumers are looking for protein in their diet.”

He said the performance of the company-owned stores since the acquisition of the Gillett’s (Callington) business a year ago had been “outstanding”, while Appleby Westward’s like-for-like sales were ahead of the market place.