Norwegian food conglomerate Orkla has announced the acquisition of the Flying Pizza and Pizza Planet pizza chains, which between them operate 73 franchisee-operated sales outlets in Germany, for an undisclosed amount.
It also recently purchased another German pizza chain, Stückwerk.
The move follows on from Orkla's purchase of approximately 75% of the shares in New York Pizza in June, a leading pizza chain in the Netherlands, which operates 342 franchisee-operated sales outlets.
A Growing Pizza Empire
Along with the leading pizza chain in Finland, Kotipizza (which has a total of 293 sales outlets), the latest acquisitions mean that Orkla now operates 635 franchisee-operated pizza outlets in various locations across Europe.
“We have now established a solid foothold in the growing German pizza market," commented Orkla President and CEO Jaan Ivar Semlitsch.
"We have a clear ambition of increasing our presence in the out of home channel, which has higher growth than the traditional grocery sector."
Network Across Germany
Flying Pizza operates 43 franchisee-operated sales outlets in northern and eastern Germany, while Pizza Planet has 30 outlets concentrated in the suburbs of Berlin. Stückwerk is based in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, and has 32 outlets.
Between them, the three businesses boasted a total turnover of €45.3 million in 2020, equivalent to NOK 448 million.
“With the acquisitions of Stückwerk, Flying Pizza and Pizza Planet we are well on our way to also becoming one of the leading pizza chains in Germany," commented Kenneth Haavet, Orkla EVP and CEO of Orkla Consumer & Financial Investments. "We will continue to grow both organically and structurally when opportunities arise."
Orkla, which operates in the consumer, out-of-home and bakery markets in the Nordics, Baltics and selected markets in Central Europe and India, posted a turnover of NOK 47.1 billion (€4.76 billion) in 2020.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. For more Retail news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
