SPAR International, the Dutch multinational group into food retail, has reported an exceptionally strong year in 2018 with global retail sales of €35.8 billion for the year ending December 31, 2018, representing an increase of 5.4% on a constant currency basis.
In 2018, SPAR saw a year-on-year increase of 335 additional stores, bringing the total number to 13,112 in 48 countries worldwide. This included entry into four new countries, equating to over 7.4 million sqm of sales area across all SPAR formats.
The diversity of formats under SPAR is tailored to suit each market, along with SPAR’s inherent customer-centric focus which evolves as modern retail and supply chain technology solutions are adopted. All these factors contributed to SPAR’s ongoing strong retail performance.
In terms of the regions, in the Middle East and Africa, where SPAR has an established presence in 15 countries, the brand maintained strong growth of 8.2% to achieve regional turnover of €5.9 billion. In the Middle East, specifically, SPAR is one of the fastest growing retail brands and now has presence in four of the six GCC countries. Sales from the four markets totalled €226 million with all partners projecting good growth for the coming year through expansion.
Commenting on the results, Tobias Wasmuht, CEO of SPAR International, says, “Our strong network of SPAR partners and supply chains across four continents gives the brand a competitive advantage in an increasingly global marketplace, while our multi-format strategy allows us to respond to changing customer needs. Our continuous compound annual growth of 5.2% over the last three years creates a strong platform to build from for the future and indicates that our ‘Better Together’ strategy, launched in 2016, continues to deliver for the organisation, our partners and our customers.”
Wasmuht concluded that as a result of SPAR’s ‘Better Together’ strategy, the brand has made good progress in the area of international joint buying and procurement. “Our strategic objective is to accelerate this progress by further harnessing our international scale, pooling our global resources to reap economies of scale in all areas of our business and uniting our global partners to be and act better together.”
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