Lidl to increase healthy food sales 35 percent by 2026

Posted: 15 July 2021 | Arianna Dinelli | No comments yet

Lidl GB has today announced a new healthy food commitment, which will see the discounter increase sales of healthy and healthier products to at least 85 percent of total sales, based on tonnage volume, by 2025. 

Lidl says its specialist nutrition teams have developed a bespoke nutrient profiling system (NPS) based on Public Health England’s nutrient criteria for front-of-pack traffic light labelling, focusing on fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt, which ranks all products as healthy, healthier or least healthy. 

As part of the commitment, its teams are said to be assessing over 200 lines each year that can be improved to meet the healthy or healthier criteria. Lidl also claim that they will be engaging with suppliers to ensure a boost of its healthier products. 

This comes as the discounter has invested in its ‘Get Fresh’ initiative, which aims to increase the range of fresh healthy products available to customers in-store, to offer more healthy choices. Stores have been upgraded with energy-efficient chillers which can stock more than 100 products on shelves. Lidl says it will be prioritising placing fresh, healthy products prominently at the front of store. The programme will be complete by September this year.

“Our Healthy Eating Pledge is our most ambitious healthy eating target yet and is focused on helping families make healthier choices when they shop with us, without compromising on price,” said Christian Härtnagel, CEO at Lidl GB.

“Ahead of the National Food Strategy’s release later this week it’s fantastic to see Lidl making such strong commitments to increasing sales of healthier foods, particularly an ambitious 35 percent increase in sales of fruit and veg,” said Rebecca Tobi, Peas Please project manager at the Food Foundation.

The latest commitments are in addition to steps previously taken to promote healthy eating amongst children and reduce pester power, such as the removal of cartoon characters from its own brand cereal ranges, and in 2014 becoming the first supermarket in Britain to remove sweets and chocolates from checkouts nationwide.