Waitrose has announced it is to take on rival Tesco by launching a price-matching drive.
From today, the upmarket grocery chain will match Tesco prices on 1,000 top-selling branded products, including Heinz baked beans, Ribena and Persil washing powder .
The move, which starts today, will cost £26m per year and marks the first time the supermarket has adopted price-matching tactics.
Waitrose said the 1,000 price match items will be monitored twice a week to ensure they are kept in line with prices at Britain’s largest supermarket .
The Waitrose Brand Price Match initiative follows strong growth in the company’s own-branded goods, which were launched in March 2009 and now account for 17 per cent of total sales .
Waitrose recently posted group sales of £4.5bn in the year to January 31, an increase of 25 per cent from the corresponding figure in 2008.
Operating profits for the year stood at £268m and the retailer also revealed that sales in the first half of 2010 increased by 12 per cent.
