If you’re a regular Asda shopper you might notice some changes occurring within your local supermarket over the next 12 months.

That’s because the retailer is going to be axing between 5,000 and 6,000 products from its ranges, following a decline in sales.

It’s not yet known exactly which products will be disappearing from the shop shelves, but a category-by-category review is already underway and it’s thought the cull will mostly focus on trimming varying product sizes down, rather than reducing choices.

For example, within the current tomato ketchup range, brands offer various different size bottles. Instead of offering so many, the range would be reduced to just feature small, medium and large options to make things simpler for customers.

And this isn’t the only thing you might notice looking a little different in stores, as Asda is also going to be adjusting the way that products are displayed to customers.

This is according to the executive chairman, Allan Leighton, who told The Grocer: ‘We’ve got around 30,000 SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) and we probably need to be in the 24 to 25,000 range so we’re probably 5,000 over SKUed.

‘The challenge is to get that adjustment made in the next 12 months and we’ve already started that as we go through the range reviews and the range and price architecture by category. We’re adjusting both that and the way that the product is displayed on the shelves.’

While some might be sad to see certain products go, the Asda boss claims it’ll be a positive move for their suppliers, as they’re hoping it will result in more volume sales.

He says the idea isn’t to sell less, but to ‘sell more per SKU’ and that the big focus for the company is to focus on getting ‘all the basic stuff right’.

Asda also recently launched its Rollback initiative cutting 4,000 prices by an average of 25%and brought back its iconic ‘Asda Price’ slogan as part of a mission to ‘make Asda the cheapest traditional supermarket’ in the UK. 

This means they plan to have lower prices than the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, which are also considered to be ‘traditional’ supermarkets, as they sell a wider range of products across own-brand and branded ranges, as well as offering services like online delivery, clothing, and fuel. 

Discount supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl are a little different, as they stock a smaller number of products and don’t offer all of the same services. As such, Asda says they aren’t able to accurately compare all of their deals against them.

However, the retailer did confirm that there will be certain instances where the new Asda Rollback prices are cheaper than that at Aldi. 

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