Wholesaler Metcash’s revenue grew in the first half of FY24 amid higher sales across its food, liquor, and hardware businesses.

Metcash is known for its supermarket brands IGA and Foodland and convenience brand Campbells/C-Store. It also owns liquor store brands Cellarbrations, IGA Liquor, and The Bottle-O, and hardware store brands Home Hardware, Total Tools, and Hardings Hardware.

During the first half, the group’s revenue increased 1.6 per cent from last year to $9 billion including charge-throughs. This comes as food sales, excluding tobacco, rose 5.7 per cent while liquor sales climbed 2.4 per cent.

Hardware sales rose 2.9 per cent, with growth in Total Tools, which Metcash took full ownership of last month, offsetting a slight decline in the company’s independent hardware group (IHG).

Meanwhile, tobacco sales fell 12.2 per cent due to what Metcash claims was “a rise in illicit trade” and the trend to alternatives.

“Our food and liquor pillars performed particularly well, delivering increased earnings on the strong comparative period. It was also pleasing to see our supermarkets business return to volume growth in the second quarter as inflation showed,” said Doug Jones, CEO at Metcash.

“In hardware, sales in both our IHG and Total Tools network continued to be resilient in a more challenging market. Sales growth was delivered in both retail networks, however, increased cost pressures and a further reduction of inventory in the IHG retail network weighed on hardware’s earnings for the half.”

Underlying EBIT decreased 3.4 per cent to $246.5 million while underlying profit after tax slid 10.9 per cent to $142.5 million.

For the first four weeks of the second half of FY24, group sales, excluding tobacco, increased 0.8 per cent.