---
title: Own label now sells more than half of UK grocery. What branded teams do next.
seo_title: Own label passes half of UK grocery units | What branded CPG teams do next
description: Own label now accounts for 52% of units sold in UK grocery, according to Circana. Five things branded category and RGM teams can do about it.
slug: /news/own-label-half-of-uk-grocery
template: article
date: 2026-09-27
category: Point of view
author: Advise
schema: Article
tags: [category, rgm]
---

# Own label now sells more than half of UK grocery. What branded teams do next.

Own label now accounts for **52% of all units sold in UK grocery**, according to Circana's analysis of more than 230 FMCG categories. It's not a UK quirk: own label holds 59% of units in Spain, 56% in the Netherlands and 52% in Germany.

Circana puts the shift down to price sensitivity since 2021 and to retailers getting much better at own label. Entry-level lines are more competitive, and premium own-label ranges have expanded. As Circana's Ananda Roy put it, supermarket private label brands have spent a decade "becoming powerful brands in their own right".

For a branded category team, that means every range review and every promotion negotiation now happens with a strong own-label alternative sitting next to your product. The retailer makes more margin on it, and increasingly the shopper is happy to buy it.

Five things we see the best branded teams doing about it.

## 1. Watch the price gap, not just your price

Your price only matters relative to the own-label equivalent next to it. Track the gap by retailer, by pack and by week, and know the point at which your shoppers start to switch. When a retailer cuts its own-label price or launches a premium tier, you want to know that week, not at the next quarterly review.

## 2. Know who is switching, and to what

Share loss to own label is rarely even. It concentrates in particular pack sizes, retailers and shopper groups. Switching analysis tells you whether you're losing light buyers who were never loyal, or your core buyers, who are much more expensive to win back. Those need different responses.

## 3. Make promotions earn their place

When own label is cheaper every day, a deep promotion can simply subsidise volume you'd have sold anyway, or teach shoppers to wait for the deal. Split every promotion into base and incremental volume, compare mechanics on return per euro or pound, and cut the ones that only move volume between your own products.

## 4. Win the range review with the retailer's numbers

Buyers make space decisions on their own metrics. Walk in with rate of sale, distribution and incremental value measured the way the buyer measures them, and show what the category loses if your SKU goes. A brand that brings the answer to the range review is harder to delist than one that brings a request.

## 5. Shorten the time from signal to decision

None of this works on a monthly reporting cycle. Own-label moves are weekly. The teams holding share are the ones who spot a competitive threat early and adjust while it still matters, which means the analysis has to be automated rather than rebuilt in Excel every time.

## Where Advise fits

Advise harmonises your EPOS, panel, and price and promotion data into one view, including the own-label lines in your categories. Price gaps, switching, promotion incrementality and distribution are ready-made analyses, refreshed every time new data arrives, and [Intelligence](/intelligence) turns them into a brief you can take into the buyer meeting.

[See Core](/core) · [Book a demo](/demo)

*Source: Circana, private label unit share across Europe's six biggest grocery markets, reported April 2026.*