Nisa’s new contracts with Costcutter and McColl’s helped the company boost sales by 17.7% compared to the same period last year.

The delivered wholesaler and retailer took over £163m worth of business from P&H including a supply deal to 668 McColl’s stores and 140 Costcutter stores. A further 1,090 Costcutter stores began using Nisa at the beginning of this year.

There’s good news for Nisa retailers and other existing Nisa wholesale customers as well, with Nisa HQ reporting a 38% sales increase at wholesale level over the same 10 week Christmas period.

One of the strongest performing sectors was Nisa’s fresh range – which registered 23.1% growth. This was driven by an 38.1% uptick in pre-pack fruit, a 38.6% uptick in pre-pack vegetables and a 43.7% uptick in ready meals.

Nisa CEO Arnu Misra explained the company’s success, stating: “We successfully invested in promotions to assist our members over the key festive trading period, resulting in positive like for likes and good organic growth in store numbers.”

The results are good news for Nisa’s retail members, who are reliant on the group meeting or exceeding its sales forecasts in order to receive the payouts agreed as a result of the group’s takeover by the Co-op.

The Nisa-Co-op deal is still subject to approval by the Competition and Markets Authority but both Nisa and the Co-op expected the deal to go through in Spring 2018.