The Lincolnshire Co-operative has announced a 12.6% increase in like-for-like sales for the three week period from December 11 until New Year’s Eve. 

Sales at Lincolnshire Co-op shot up during the busy festive season, with like-for-likes for the two week period between December 18 and 31 up 17.7%, with the retailer attributing the growth to strong performances to the success of locally-sourced products, a strong performing festive range and customers taking advantage of extra dividend.

Sales of the Love Local range saw 30% growth while local cheeses proved particularly popular with sales doubling. The Co-op’s festive range saw sales increase by 15%. 

Last month the Lincolnshire Co-op paid out a dividend bonus of £1.6m to its 260,000 members, on top of the £1.9m collected during the year. In that month, members used £1.3m of dividend to pay for their shopping in food stores.

Chief retail officer Mark Finn said: “We’ve had an exceptional festive performance and my thanks go out to every member of our team. We had a fantastic Christmas range on sale and many customers pre-ordered products like turkeys as they trusted us to deliver. Our community-based locations and long opening hours meant people could conveniently pick up everything they needed to make their celebration special by just popping into their local Lincolnshire Co-op.

“We also paid out our dividend bonus before Christmas and we were pleased to see members treating themselves with dividend this festive season.”