Dutch wholesaler Sligro Food Group has reported a turnover of €1.9 billion in its financial year 2021, down 2.5% compared to 2020.
The company’s net profit amounted to €20 million – an increase of €90 million compared to a year earlier.
EBITDA increased by 45.3% to €109 million during the financial year, from €75 million in 2020.
Gross profit increased by 2.3 percentage points to 26.3%, with the decrease in the share of tobacco products accounting for about 0.4% of this growth.
CEO of Sligro Food Group, Koen Slippens, commented, “Our expectations from last year regarding the impact that COVID-19 would have on our markets and results in 2021 have only been partially met. On the positive side, after the restrictive measures, consumers in the Netherlands and Belgium began to visit the catering industry, amusement parks, theatres and events en masse again.
“The emergence of the Delta and later the Omicron variant was negative, which meant that, contrary to our expectations, we were unable to continue the strong recovery that occurred during the summer in the second half of the year. The capriciousness of decision-making and the government's lack of decisiveness and learning capacity did not help.”
Divisional Highlights
In the Netherlands, the company migrated all its customers to a new structure that was introduced in 2020 after completing the integration of Heineken.
The integration of delivery and self-service activities resulted in new customers and increased sales among existing customers, the company noted.
In Belgium, the Sligro focused on further integrating its activities during the financial year. It completed a large part of assortment harmonisation with ISPC.
Read More: Sligro Food Group Reports 9.5% Decline In Turnover In Third Quarter Of 2021
Market Share Gain
Slippens added, “Year-on-year comparisons are insignificant in times of COVID-19, but over the past two years we see that we have gained market share in both the Netherlands and Belgium.
“Our resilience as an organisation, based on a culture full of entrepreneurship and decisiveness, also proved to be great in 2021. We have tremendous respect for the way in which and the speed with which our colleagues and customers have always responded to the new developments surrounding COVID-19. From that strong foundation, we look to the future with great confidence.”
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest Retail news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
