This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
PANIC buying of toilet paper, pasta and other essential products in March boosted retail sales to their biggest-ever monthly increase, but the boost to first quarter GDP is expected to be reversed amid the coronavirus outbreak, while Myer extended the shutdown of its physical stores.
Preliminary data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the rise in seasonally adjusted terms was the food retailing industry, with supermarkets and grocery stores, liquor, and other specialised food retailing all recording increases in demand.
Food rose 23.5% in March to more than $2.71 billion, and the supermarket and grocery store subgroup jumped 22.4% to $2.18 billion.
Monthly retail turnover for perishable groceries and all other groceries increased in original terms by 21.6% and 35.6% respectively. Monthly turnover doubled for products such as toilet and tissue paper, flour, rice and pasta, while monthly turnover for canned food, medicinal products and cleaning goods increased by more than 50%.
The rise in supermarket retail turnover reached a peak in mid-March before levelling off.
The total rise surpassed the previous record of 8.1% in June of 2000, when households brought forward expenditure ahead of the GST introduction.
Sales were also strong in retail industries selling items related to home offices. The numbers were slightly offset by strong falls in cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services, which were restricted from offering dine-in options, while clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing were also impacted by new social distancing regulations introduced in March.
Myer extends shutdown
Myer joined Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments in extending the shutdown of its physical stores until 11th May, following last week’s federal government announcement that measures to manage COVID-19, including social distancing, public gathering and stay home directions are unlikely to change in the next four weeks.
They are among the bigger names in retail that closed their doors as trading ground to halt over the past month. Premier Investments lengthened the temporary closure of its 900 retail stores across Australia on Tuesday, and restated that it would not pay rent on its stores for the duration of the shutdown.
Premier’s combative chief executive officer, Solomon Lew has threated to shutter stores if landlords did not lower rents to help out tenants before the announcement of mandatory commercial tenancy code of conduct.
“Myer will closely monitor government measures and advice over the coming weeks, with a view to reopening stores as soon as possible. The reopening of stores may occur on a staged basis, taking account of applicable conditions and government measures across different states and localities,” the major department store said in a statement.
Like those at Premier, Myer’s employees will remain stood down as a result of the decision. Myer’s initial shutdown until 27th April impacted about 10,000 workers who would not be paid during this period.
However, Myer said its online business had performed strongly since the physical stores were closed on 29th March. Online fulfilment is occurring at 26 locations across the store and distribution centre network, and has resulted in approximately 20% of team members being asked to return to work to support online fulfilment.
John King, Myer chief executive officer, said the decision to extend the period of temporary closure of all physical stores was “extremely tough”, but was reflective of operating the business in a manner that protects the health and wellbeing of customers and team members, whilst supporting the government efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19.
“Our plans for reopening our physical stores are well advanced and we look forward to welcoming customers back into stores, when it is safe to do so,” he said. “The strong growth in the online business during the past few weeks has been particularly encouraging.”
