Written evidence submitted by Sainsbury’s (END0021)

About Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s employs over 195,000 colleagues and operates over 2,200 stores across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including over 600 Sainsbury’s supermarkets, more than 800 Sainsbury’s Local convenience stores, and over 800 Argos stores.  We also operate 23 depots and five store support centres.  In addition, we have major online channels for food, clothing, general merchandise and financial services. 

As one of the UK’s leading food retailers, with around 26 million customer transactions every week, we believe retailers have an important role to play in helping children and families live healthier lives.  Sainsbury’s has been working since the 1980s, to improve the nutritional value of our products, and the health of our customers.  We were the first to pioneer the introduction of multi-traffic light colour-coded nutrition labelling in grocery retailing back in 2005 and the first to remove multi-buy promotions from across our entire grocery business in 2016.
 

Introduction

Our aim is to be the most trusted retailer where people love to work and shop.  A key part of this is meeting our colleagues’ and customers’ expectations as a responsible business, making sure that the products we sell are right for our customers, and that we are selling them appropriately.
 

High-caffeine energy drinks

As one of the nation’s largest food and drink retailers we sell a wide range of soft drinks, including high-caffeine energy drinks.  We are submitting evidence to this inquiry in order to inform the Committee of our position on the sale of energy drinks, particularly to children, and to reassure members, colleagues and customers that we take our responsibilities as a retailer very seriously and this is the case with our approach on energy drinks.

We currently sell a range of high-caffeine energy drinks, predominantly branded, but also several own brand products.  A table of our own brand range of high-caffeine energy drinks is below:

With regards to our own brand high-caffeine energy drinks, we are fully compliant with the labelling regulations as set out in the European Commission Directive 2002/67/EC, EU Regulation 1169/2011 and support the provisions of the British Soft Drinks Association Code of Practice on the marketing and presentation of these products.  Our range of own brand energy drinks with a caffeine content above 150mg/l all carry a clear health warning advising customers that they are not recommended for children under the age of 16, pregnant or breast feeding women and are either presented as, or recommend as a maximum single serving of 250ml.  

Sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children

In January 2018, we made the decision to voluntarily restrict the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children under the age of 16.  As of 1st March 2018, the sale of these products has been restricted across all Sainsbury’s stores and through our website.  

Sainsbury’s was one of the first retailers to introduce a ‘Challenge 25’ approach throughout our grocery and groceries online businesses to prevent the underage sale of alcohol and tobacco.  We have been able to draw on that experience and use many of the same robust procedures and training to make sure all of our required colleagues are implementing our voluntary ban on the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children under the age of 16 successfully.

Soft Drinks Industry Levy

Like all retailers we have recently reviewed our policies regarding soft drinks to reflect the implementation of the Soft Drink Industry Levy, which came into force on 6th April 2018. 

Soft drinks are a key contributor the UK’s sugar intake so since 2014 we’ve removed 2,267 tonnes of sugar from own-brand high juices, fizzy drinks and adult socialising drinks.  More recently we have removed 400 tonnes from our own-brand squash and mixers, 524 tonnes from our own brand carbonated soft drinks range and a further 557 tonnes from our 1 litre and 2 litre chilled and ambient from concentrate juice drinks.  Take together this is equivalent to removing over 12 billion calories. 

Across those products impacted by the sugar levy we have reduced sugar by 38.6%, meaning our average sugar per 100g is now 1.93g compared to 3.14g in 2015.  However, we haven’t changed the recipe of all our own brand drinks so that we continue to offer our customers choice.  In these cases the cost of the levy has been passed on to the customer (including any additional VAT as a result of the levy) in as transparent a way as possible.

We take our responsibilities as a retailer very seriously and will continue to review the evidence and our policies to make sure we are helping our customers and colleagues live well for less.

May 2018