Wholesaler Makro Portugal has managed to gain market share during the pandemic, despite the impact to its business, its chief executive has told local media.
Chief executive David Antunes told Portuguese daily Jornal Economico that global sales at the beginning of the 2020 financial year “showed encouraging dynamic growth and were at the upper limit of our expectations".
Although the third quarter was subsequently affected by lockdown measures (-17.5%), the fourth quarter results enabled the company to “return almost to the level of the previous year” (-0.5%), so we were able to gain market share".
Despite having opened its doors to end consumers in April and May 2020 and in the second half of January 2021, Antunes stressed that the company will remain a wholesaler, entirely focused on the digital and HoReCa channels.
He pointed out that the pandemic affected and is still affecting mainly HoReCa, but that the channel continued looking for new solutions and reinventing itself, including with help from Makro Portugal.
Wholesale 360
The impact of the pandemic on the wholesaler was to force it to accelerate, innovate and adapt its business. This included the implementation of the 'Wholesale 360º' strategy, which consists of offering several services that complement each other and end up having an impact on all professional dimensions of customers' businesses.
Looking to the future, he said that Makro Portugal would continue to provide support to both the HoReCa sector as well as digital channels.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine
