The companies of the Schwarz Group can look back on a successful financial year and generated sales of 167.2 billion euros, which represents an increase in sales of 8.5 percent. The balance sheet date was February 29, 2024. The aggregated total turnover includes all sales under commercial law. The number of stores rose by around 200 to around 13,900.
What is special about this is that the company had managed to cope with the growth in sales with the same number of employees (575,000) due to higher prices due to inflation, but also improved processes. In the past year, Schwarz was also able to maintain the large gap to Europe's number two Rewe, which achieved sales of 92.3 billion euros (plus 8.9 percent). The British retail group Tesco achieved a slight increase of 5 percent on sales of around 80 billion euros. There are currently no exact sales figures from Aldi. The last figures from 2022 amounted to a total of approx. 76 billion euros in Europe.
Focus on low prices pays off
The fact is that consumers are still very price-sensitive and will probably remain so for the time being. Despite increased purchase prices, especially for merchandise, raw materials, energy and transport, as well as interest rate hikes, the Schwarz Group was able to cushion some of the impact through its efficient process and cost management. Thus, the customers of Kaufland and Lidl were able to rely on the usual attractive prices despite the difficult situation. The discounter Lidl achieved a store turnover of 125.5 billion euros, an increase of 9.4 percent (plus of almost 11 billion euros) compared to the previous year. Kaufland increased sales by 7.8 percent to 34.2 billion euros. Total online sales amounted to 1.7 billion euros (minus 9.4 percent), which was on a par with the 2021 financial year. According to the latest market developments, this decline was to be expected for online shops in Germany, as sales shot up due to the Corona pandemic.
Expansion with prudence and efficiency
In the last fiscal year, Schwarz was able to open 200 new stores of Kaufland and Lidl. Even though the target number was once 400, the company was still able to achieve an impressive result. Investments amounted to around 8 billion euros in the 2023 financial year. The focus here was in particular on the modernization and expansion of stores, new warehouse locations and the safeguarding of supply chains. Of the total of 13,900 stores, 12,200 now run under the Lidl logo.
Kaufland was able to achieve sales of 34.2 billion euros in 2023, an increase of 7.8 percent. Here, a large part of the good result could be achieved by taking over further former Real space. In Germany alone, 21 billion euros were achieved in the large-scale sector.
Food production in full focus
What also benefited consumers is that the Schwarz Group is increasingly acting as a food producer. The manufacturing companies of the Schwarz Group were able to deliver goods worth around 4.2 billion euros, mostly to Lidl and Kaufland.
This corresponds to a 26 percent increase in sales compared to the previous year. This result is mainly due to the growth of Schwarz Produktion and the expansion to include the coffee, pasta and paper product groups. The beverage plant in Derby (Great Britain) was also the first Schwarz production site outside the domestic market to successfully start operations.
The Schwarz Digits division, which was newly founded in the 2023 financial year, was also able to contribute to the good result with sales of 1.9 billion euros, so that the course has also been set for a further positive future in the digital sector.
Read more: Schwarz-Gruppe macht weiter Dampf, Umsatz + 8,5 %! - Supermarkt Inside (supermarkt-inside.de)
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