Tesco to remove Irish food section from UK stores

Tesco in the UK is to remove a section of its supermarkets specifically stocked with Irish products and reduce the amount of food brands from Ireland on offer.

From July, the Irish food area will be removed from the larger “World Foods” section in many of the chain’s bigger supermarkets.

Tesco has said the most popular of the products will continue to be stocked on the main shelves. However, it could not detail how many of the brands would remain.

The “World Foods” section in Tesco groups products associated with particular countries.

The areas are typically found in Tesco’s Superstore and Extra outlets, the larger of the chain’s range of shops.

Among the products stocked are Keogh’s Dubliner crisps, Grace’s Irish oatmeal biscuits, Seer’s whiskey cake and Erin Irish potato soup.

Wider availability

From next month, the most popular of the products will be shelved with their food equivalents in the main body of the shop.

This comes after a review of the products in the last year, a spokeswoman said.

This will increase “availability for those stores and those people that didn’t have access to a ‘World Food’ aisle”, the spokeswoman said.

“We are increasing the amount of stock of the popular products that were in the ‘World Food’ aisles. They will now be in the main estate of our products,” she said.

“ Say for instance, there was a type of porridge oats that traditionally was in the Irish world food aisles – which was only in certain stores and whether we had space – they are now going to our main range so they will sit beside our porridge oats,” the spokeswoman said.

“So we are not getting rid of Irish products, we are putting them into our main ranges so actually more people will have access to it rather than being in some of the larger stores . . .”

The Tesco spokeswoman said the “World Foods” section would remain. The section stocks foods from different countries dependent on where the store is situated and the profile of the customers.

The spokeswoman could not detail which Irish products will be dropped from the Tesco shelves nor the criteria used.

Other large British supermarket chains such as Morrissons and Sainsbury's also sell Irish food products such as Flahavan's porridge oats and Tayto crisps.