Morrisons hailed a successful rollout of its wholesale agreement while Waitrose blamed Brexit for the financial results each company published this week.

Morrisons, which started supplying 1,300 McColl’s stores this year, expects to hit £700m of wholesale supply sales before the end of 2018. Like-for-like sales were up 4.9% in the six months to 5 August, but operating profits fell 15.5% to £197m.

Waitrose’s like-for-like sales rose by 2.6% in the six months to 28 July, but operating profits fell 12%
to £96.4m.

Chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield said “uncertainty facing consumers due to ongoing Brexit negotiations” had dented profits.