Unicoop Firenze has reached an agreement to take over 29 stores from Coop Centro Italia in the provinces of Siena and Arezzo.
The deal is worth €85 million, and is subject to approval from Italy’s Antitrust Authority. It is set to be implemented in the next three to four years, as part of an initiative that will see the two cooperatives developing new forms of collaboration, with the goal of improving efficiency, as well as optimising operational results and future growth.
Coop Centro Italia will continue to manage these points of sale until the deal is finalised.
The acquisition will enable Unicoop Firenze to further consolidate its presence in Tuscany. This can be seen as a response to rival grocer Conad del Tirreno, which announced its plans to invest €160 million over the next three years to open new stores, with the intention of surpassing Coop in the Tuscany region.
Unicoop Firenze ended 2017 with €2.41 billion in sales, up 1.78% compared to the previous year. The cooperative has 104 stores in seven provinces and over one million members.
Sales Increase
Coop Centro Italia reported 2017 sales of €594 million, up 2.5% on a like-for-like basis, and by 9.5% in total. The cooperative has more than 60 stores in the Umbria, Tuscany, Lazio and Abruzzo regions, and 470,000 members.
Consolidation and cooperation are increasingly the buzz words in the world of Italian cooperatives, in an attempt to respond to increased competition in the local grocery retail market.
The latest such move was the addition of Coop Sicilia and Coop Eridana to Italy’s largest consumer cooperative, Coop Alleanza 3.0, which was formally implemented on 1 January 2018. The two cooperatives have brought their 32 stores to a network that already has more than 400 outlets across 12 regions of Italy.
Italian Grocery Market
Looking at the wider market, Coop Italia’s report on the country's grocery retail segment indicates that overall sales in the period January to October 2017 were up by 2.3% compared to the previous year, while like-for-like sales in 2018 are expected to grow by 1%.
Sales in the supermarket channel, which account for 39% of total sales, grew by 3.9% in the first ten months of 2017, and are expected to grow by a further 1.5% in 2018. Meanwhile, hypermarkets, which represent 28% of the total, saw a 1.3% increase in turnover, and should grow by 0.9% this year.
Discounters saw growth of 3.5%, but this is expected to drop 2.2% this year. Specialist drug stores registered the highest growth, increasing by 6.1%, and should also see the biggest increase in 2018 (+3.5%), while independent retailers were the only segment to register negative growth (-3.5%).
Among the various product categories, FMCG sales grew by 2.8%, fresh produce was up by 3.1%, and non-food products were down by 3.7%.
© 2018 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.
