In April, sales at airport duty free stores in Canada rose 8% year on year to reach $129m, whereas border stores saw a slight decrease of 0.65% to $9.4m in the same period.

 

As previously reported, airport duty free shops in Canada registered a 16% year-on-year increase in sales to reach $375m last year and in January of this year the Frontier Duty Free Association (FDFA) said that it expected that this figure was only likely to continue growing.

 

It appears that the association’s forecast has been accurate so far; at least for the period between January and April of this year during which Canadian airports increased their sales by +7% year on year, reaching $126m. Interestingly border stores also saw an 8% rise in the January to April period yoy, registering sales of $35.3m.

 

Splitting sales by region for the border business, the Prairie region registered sales of $581,000, which was a marked decline of 14%. For the January to April period the decrease was not so pronounced, but nonetheless significant at -10% to $2m.

 

 

In the Pacific region sales reached $1.6m in April, which was almost a 2% decrease yoy. For the Jan-Apr period sales looked healthier with a 7% rise to $6.4m.

 

In Ontario sales reached $5.5m, up 2% in April. For the Jan-Apr period sales saw an increase of an impressive 11%.

 

Finally the Atlantic/Quebec region registered $1m in sales for April, which represented a decrease in sales of around 2.8% compared to April 2015. Between January and April sales equalled $3.2m ; an increase of around 8.8%.