October is British Apple Month and British Apples & Pears Limited (BAPL), the UK top fruit grower association, is delighted to announce Aldi is the 2023 apple supermarket of the year.

The award is based on BAPL member sales to British supermarkets from September 2022 to end of August 2023. As the last of the 2022 apple and pear crop has now been sold, BAPL can reveal the supermarket of the year.

In the year starting September 2022, Aldi sold 32,165 tonnes of British dessert apples, ahead of Tesco that sold 28,954 and Sainsbury’s that sold 24,448 tonnes.

Commenting on this achievement, Ali Capper, Executive Chair of BAPL, said: “Aldi’s commitment to British has been growing every year. With a grocery market share of only 10.2%, we are delighted to see Aldi significantly over-indexing for British apples. Aldi sold 23% of all British apples last year – the greatest volume of any UK supermarket, just pipping Tesco’s 21%. For Aldi to sell more than double the expected volume (based on grocery market share) is an excellent performance and one which we hope other retailers will emulate.”

In addition to the above award for performance in the most recent year, BAPL has also looked back over the last three years to identify longer term support for the category. In terms of all apple and pear sales over the last three years (2019 crop to 2022 crop inclusive), Sainsbury’s sold the most (117,892 tonnes), with Tesco second (116,869 tonnes) and Aldi in third (111,373 tonnes).

“It’s so important all our supermarkets get behind British farmers and our wonderful British apples and pears. Buying British over imported fruit saves on food miles, and we know consumers want British if at all possible. When we have such wonderful fruit available in good quantities, that will store well, there really is no reason to look overseas. It would be great to see every retailer making it much easier for the shopper to find British apples and pears in their stores and online.”

BAPL continues to publish monthly UK apple sales data here