Serbia’s grocery retail market grew in 2020, with the top eight players achieving a turnover of over RSD 356 billion (€3.02 billion), new data has shown.
Delhaize Serbia, Mercator-S and Lidl Srbija continued to dominate, but it was the German discounter that registered the highest growth rate, according to financial data from the Business Registers Agency (APR), published by daily Danas.
Lidl Srbija Performance
Lidl Srbija saw its turnover grow 54% in 2020, up from RSD 37 billion (€314.6 million) in 2019 to RSD 57 million (€484.7 million). In just three years of operations in Serbia, the discounter has been going from strength to strength.
Market leader Delhaize Serbia (owned by Ahold Delhaize), present with Maxi supermarkets, Tempo hypermarkets and Shop & Go neighbourhood stores, generated RSD 111.4 billion (€944.0 million), or RSD 6 billion more (+6.3%) than in 2019.
Mercator-S (owned by Fortenova Group), which operates Idea supermarkets and Mercator hypermarkets, achieved a total revenue of RSD 79.9 billion (€680.3 million), also growing on the previous year.
Trailing the top three are mostly local players: Aman (RSD 24.9 billion), Univerexport (RSD 23 billion), Germany’s Metro (RSD 22.3 billion), DIS (RSD 21.2 billion) and Gomex (RSD 16.5 billion).
Three-Year Period
Financial data for the period 2018-2020 reveals that almost all grocery retailers recorded revenue growth, with only Metro seeing its revenue drop, while DIS is at approximately the same level.
Most of the eight biggest players in the market also reported a net profit at the close of each of the last three years, except for Metro and Mercator-S.
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Branislav Pekic. For more Retail news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
