Sainsbury's has beaten its target for supply chain savings and is on track to deliver its overall savings target of £440 million by March 2008, the company said as it released its results for last year.

The retailer set itself a three year target to achieve the savings which included £50m in supply chain operations, £80m in IT systems, £120m in stock loss, £70m in store operations, £40m in marketing and £80m in central costs.
It said it had exceeded those targets in supply chain and IT as a result of better in-house operations. It was on track to achieve the targets in store operations and central costs. But it was behind in stock losses and marketing. Group sales were up by some seven per cent and the underlying profit figure was up almost 43 percent.

According to Logistics Manager, Chief executive Justin King said: "Today we are announcing new three-year targets which build on the strong progress we've made to date and move us from recovery to long-term growth. As we are tracking ahead of our original MSGA targets the new three-year targets overlap the final year of our MSGA recovery plan and run until March 2010. Our focus on driving sales continues with a target to deliver £3.5 billion of additional sales split two-thirds from grocery and one-third from non-food ranges from March 2007 to March 2010. Added to the £1.8 billion of sales growth already delivered, this new target, if achieved, would give a total sales growth of "5.3 billion over the five-year period March 2005 to March 2010."