Europe’s shoppers turn to discount food store

Not only are the German discounters benefiting from Europe’s economic woes but recent results from other stores show rapid growth in the discount sector. Carrefour revealed that sales at Dia, its discount business in Spain, rose 11.9 per cent to €4.53bn (£3.97bn) last year, while German retailer Rewe unveiled sales at its Czech discount operation Billa, were up a massive Czk18bn (£551m) – a year-on-year increase of almost 40 per cent.

Rewe also has plans to expand Billa into the Ukraine, where it has 10 store openings planned a year, in towns with populations exceeding 1 million. Billa launched in the Ukraine in 2000, but to date its activities in the country have been on a modest scale and it has only 10 stores there at present.

One analyst commented that "Across both mature and emerging markets, discounters continue to enjoy extremely favourable market conditions on the back of clearly adverse economic developments."


Source: internationalsupermarketnews.com

Publication date: 3/3/2009