UK supermarket giant Tesco is steadily closing the gap on Europe’s biggest retailer Carrefour, according to the 2004 edition of Mintel’s European Retail Rankings.
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Tesco is the clear second player in Europe (and the fourth world-wide) and its sales have risen from under two thirds of Carrefour’s a couple of years ago to almost three quarters in 2003/04.
The top 14 European retailers and 17 of the top 20 are food retailers and their jockeying for position is creating significant interest, according to Mintel.
“If there is one feature that most of Europe’s leading food retailers share, it is that they are all ambitious companies. Organic growth within one country where the market is already mature is just not enough. Although Carrefour is the number one grocery player in Europe by a considerable margin and is number two in the world behind Wal-Mart, Tesco is proving equally successful and its growth in market share has been relentless,” said Richard Perks, director of retail research at Mintel.
Apart from Tesco the big gainers are the price-led retailers. Hard discounters Aldi and Lidl as well as Wal-Mart, through its UK subsidiary ASDA, have been the biggest winners.
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By GlobalDataIn 2002/03 Wal-Mart overtook the combined William Morrison/Safeway business and Aldi overtook Edeka. In 2003/04 Aldi is expected to have moved up another place becoming the fourth largest in Europe, ahead of Rewe, and has the number three player, Intermarché, clearly in its sights.
As food is a mature market, one might expect food retailers to be slowly losing share of retail sales. In fact this is not the case as there are enough countries where food retailing is a growth sector to offset the countries, such as Germany and Austria, where it is not.
Despite economic problems, half of top ten retailers are German
Germany proves it is holding onto its central position in the retail world, despite struggling with serious economic problems. Rewe, Edika Group, Aldi, Metro Group and Schwarz Group all feature in the list of Europe’s top ten retailers, which makes Germany the most dominant country in the top ten. France has three companies in the top ten – Carrefour, Intermarché and E Leclerc, while the UK makes up the remaining two with Tesco and J Sainsbury.
“Germany is the leading economic force in the European Union and one of the largest economies in the world and many Germany-based retailers feature among the leading European retail groups. An interesting point in the German market is that it is dominated by discounters, with voluntary groups also playing an important role. German consumers are price conscious and can often be seen opting for the lowest prices. As a result, discount formats have seen their sales improving, in a declining retail market, while hypermarket and supermarket formats are struggling,” said Perks.
