News articles from the FOOD research project.
While grim predictions of a massive wave of store closures long dominated the headlines, the Swedish grocery sector is now experiencing a historic shift in trends. The total number of physical retail outlets in the country is increasing! How is that even possible?
Kroger (KR.N) plans to cut approximately 3,000 administrative positions over the next three years, CEO Greg Foran informed employees in a memo seen by Reuters on Monday, October 13. This move is clearly linked to the industry-wide adoption of AI.
In a development that has surprised many in the retail industry, Lidl Sverige has confirmed that it will open a full-scale grocery store inside Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) in central Stockholm during the summer of 2027.
Cross-border trade with Sweden is growing to new heights, worrying the food industry, grocery chains, and politicians alike. Yet the Norwegian government is hesitant to take measures to reduce the leaks.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)* presents enormous potential growth opportunities for modern grocery players. The region’s more than 600 million people spend $200 billion on groceries each year, according to McKinsey, a consulting firm.
French Carrefour is investing heavily in AI towards 2030. The group will invest no less than one hundred million euros each year in AI-driven digitalization.
Sweden’s recent temporary reduction of the food VAT – from 12 to 6 percent –has coincided with a pronounced short term fall in food prices and a measurable easing of inflation.
Carlsberg will take over production, sales, and distribution of PepsiCo’s portfolio in Denmark, Finland and the three Baltic countries from 1 January 2029 — an agreement that weakens Royal Unibrew and increases Carlsberg’s market share (and power?) in the region.
Britain’s supermarket chain Asda has reported a sharp 33% decline in annual core profit, a direct consequence of its aggressive price lowering strategy aimed at regaining customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive grocery market.
A planned Swedish cut in food VAT could lead to a dramatic price jump between Norway and Sweden. Norwegian border shops fear that even more Norwegians will make their shopping trips to Sweden.
ICA Sweden was unbeatable for most of the last 50 years, not anymore. What went wrong? Many analytics and journalists believe that the overconfidence in its own strength and history became too deep. Consequently, the board and administration have not acted quick enough on market changes the last ten to twenty years.
One year after Axfood's acquisition, supermarket chain City Gross reports a positive quarter. At the same time, Willys and Hemköp continue to take market share from ICA and Coop.
The arch-American retail giant has never managed to open a single store in New York City! It has to be one of the most talked-about paradoxes of American retail. Now that is changing!
The international grocery business has undergone significant transformation in 2025, as inflationary pressures, digital innovation, and sustainability demands continue to reshape strategies for the world’s largest retailers.
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is hated and ridiculed but delivers results quarter after quarter. A strong third quarter of 2025 with 5.8% growth in revenue to $179.5 billion and net income of $6.14 billion speaks for itself, management claims.
Sainsbury delivered a modest yet strategically significant performance in the third quarter of 2025. The company reported market share gains and highlighted like-for-like growth, predominantly driven by strong grocery sales.
Axfood delivered its quarterly report for the third quarter on Thursday, 23 October. Despite growth in both sales and market share, the stock exchange reacted with a sharp drop in price. The share fell by more than 7 percent during the day, and analysts point to several factors that explain the negative reaction.
Coop Sverige AB and its affiliated consumer cooperatives have reported a combined operating loss of SEK 2.7 billion for the fiscal year 2024, marking one of the most challenging periods in the organization’s history, writes Fri Köpenskap, a leading professional journal.
The Swedish grocery giant ICA Gruppen announces extensive changes to its organizational structure, with the goal of streamlining operations and cutting costs by 200 million Swedish kronor. That is probably not enough.
Danish Dagrofa will focus on branded products and sends a clear message to its suppliers during initial annual negotiations: Price can be decisive for justification on the shelf.
When Matmissionen was first launched in Sweden, the idea was both simple and bold: to reduce food waste by selling fully edible but for several reasons unsalable food at greatly reduced prices – and at the same time offer economically vulnerable households the opportunity to shop with dignity.
With no less then DKK 500 million (800 million NOK) in the pipeline Salling Group is now officially opening applications for the group's new investment pool, “Salling Seeds”. Prime aim for Salling Group is to strengthen the group's access to new knowledge, technologies and sustainable solutions, it says in a press release.
Swedish Coop has been a key player in the grocery market for several years, but in recent years the company has experienced significant financial challenges.
The discount chain Lidl has established itself as one of the world's fastest-growing grocery chains, with over 12,000 stores in more than 30 countries and an annual turnover of 130 billion dollars. Despite the misfortune in Norway, Lidl has experienced massive success globally.
Norwegian lobbyists are sounding the alarm about the consequences of Swedish border shopping and are asking prime minister Støre to wake up. Danish merchants are experiencing similar challenges with German grocery competition, and German retailers are concerned about cheap goods from Poland. Swedish merchants “hate” cheap beer and sausages from Denmark.
Walmart is not only the biggest retailer in the world it is also the most advanced, technologically speaking. In this article, we will take a closer look at how technical excellence has helped the company grow into the world's largest and arguably the world’s best retailer.
The European Commission has approved Salling Group's acquisition of Rimi Baltic's business in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
McCain Foods, the world’s leading potato producers has since 1957 grown from one farm in Canada to an international potato brand. How is that possible? What can we learn from that?
In collaboration with solar energy company Alight, Axfood has built and commissioned Ax-el, Sweden's largest solar park, equivalent to 117 football fields outside Hallstavik, 100 kilometres northeast of Stockholm.
British grocery stocks continue to trade weakly on the London Stock Exchange after Asda announced it intends to cut prices across the board to attract more customers.
Swedish ICA has shelved its international ambitions and will only concentrate on the domestic market for the near future. Danish Salling, on the other hand, is focusing both internationally and on the home market.
The eighth edition of NHH's Food Conference was an absolute success. Nearly 250 delegates came to get the latest news about the grocery industry. They were served heavy business and academic material and probably went home loaded with innovative ideas, or at least with a broader understanding of the entire value chain.
Ica Group sells Rimi Baltic to the Danish Salling Group. ICA will use the capital injection to invest more in the Swedish market, the only market ICA are aiming at right now, according to CEO Nina Jönsson.
The Danish retail giant, Salling Group, is now starting to mark its goods with the country of origin to make it easier for customers to choose European and explicitly not American goods.
Opening and closing times are hotly debated in retail – worldwide. We had loud discussions in Norway a few years ago, now it is Denmark's turn.
With a continued positive customer influx and increased volumes Axfood concludes a fourth quarter and year with strengthened market positions. Through the acquisition of City Gross from Bergendahls, a new and prominent position is taken within the hypermarket segment in Sweden.
It is a trend across Europe, people drink less alcohol and smoke less. The health recommendations from authorities in all countries cracks down on smoking in all forms. Danish Lidl takes the consequences of the trend and phase out all sales of tobacco and nicotine products.
In the coming three years, Dagrofa, owned by NorgesGruppen (57,5%) and KFI (42,5%) will invest big in store openings, modernization of stores and automation. If they succeed the target is to improve bottom line with approximately 200 million DKK.
By far the world's largest retailer, American Wal-Mart continues to grow fast, but without affecting the bottom line negatively. The company appears to be in complete control. Simply impressive.
Swedish Coop has struggled for several decades since peaking in the sixties and seventies. For a long time, they have had enormous values on the balance sheet, which has saved operations, after easing the balance year by year.
The concept of unmanned, 24-hour stores has been discussed and evaluated in many markets in Norway and abroad. So far it hasn't taken off completely, far from it. Danish Salling Group is defying weak forecasts and is now opening its first self-service grocery store in Denmark.
Many merchants and suppliers in Norway hoped that border residents would acquire new shopping habits after the covid pandemic, and shop more of their household budget at home and not travel so much to Sweden for cheaper food. Naturally, it didn't work out that way.
The founder of Couche-Tard, Alain Bouchard, has done what really should not be possible. From a single gas station in 1980 in Quebec Canada, he has built an international giant with more than 16,000 outlets in Canada, USA, and Europe. Now he hits at Japan.
That the boardroom is a jungle, may be a cliché, but for Nestlé top, Mark Schneider, it became a reality last week. The board chose to replace him with veteran Laurent Freixe.
In Sweden, the two most successful chains, ICA and Axfood, are now led by women. In Norway, we have no women at the CEO level, not in NorgesGruppen, not in Rema 1000 and not in Coop.
Rema 1000 lost a lot of money in Poland, several tens of millions in Sweden, some claim 250 million NOK. In Denmark, on the other hand, things are going really well. Rema 1000 is now one of the leading grocery chains and probably the fastest growing.
Condemned and accused by many, the world's largest retailer and grocery player, Walmart Inc., presents first quarter results in 2025 with strong revenue and operating income growth – in the USA and internationally.
Denmark: Not everything Salling Group takes in turns into gold. The new concept BASALT was established extremely fast but disappeared almost as quickly.
This is claimed by Professor Frode Steen, who is currently particularly concerned with the grocery industry.
OK has entered into a historic agreement with Coop Danmark, whereby OK buys part of Coop Danmark. This partnership involves a capital injection of two billion DKK into Danish Coop.
Danish and half Norwegian-owned Dagrofa came out in 2023 with DKK 426 million in operating earnings, which is the best result for the food group in more than 20 years, many of them with solid deficits.
The Spanish supermarket chain DIA is owned by the Russian billionaire and oligarch Mikhail Fridman. Despite recent EU sanctions, the supermarket chain is still unaffected by EU politics against Russian oligarchs and continues its operations in Spain, Argentina, and Brazil under the DIA brand.
Many consumers have Finnish Fazer liquorice and candies as a favourite for their Saturday and Sunday cuddles. Turnover in the Finnish Fazer Group's confectionery branch landed at a record level in 2023, but operating profit is heavily burdened by divestments and write-downs in “green business areas”.
ICA, once the clear winner in the Swedish grocery market, is again losing market shares to Axfood. The relatively new CEO of ICA AB, Nina Jönsson, claims that things are getting better for ICA towards the end of 2023 after extensive measures, not least on the price and cost side.
With a surprisingly robust growth in the fourth quarter for both Willys and Hemköp, Axfood once again proved its ability to gain market share in Sweden, writes Kepler Cheuvreux Carnegie in an analysis. The investment bank repeats its “buy” recommendation and target price of SEK 330 for the Axfood share.
Norwegians' daytrips to shop across the border in Sweden continue to be at a lower level than before the pandemic. The trend through 2023 points towards a stabilization of cross-border trade in Sweden at a new and lower level, reports Norway's biggest bank DNB in a press release.
French Carrefour have grown tired of what they believe to be unjustified price overcharging from PepsiCo and have stopped selling several products in a number of countries.
Lidl was one of the main sponsors of the World Handball Championship that France won against Norway last week. The sponsorship is matching because Lidl is the fastest growing grocery retailer in the world, a “world champion” in groceries according to many experts.
16 of the 18 people who had been prosecuted for involvement in the ICA insider scandal were convicted of insider trading by the Stockholm District Court in December. One ICA retailer in southeastern Sweden has been sentenced to three years and two months in prison for aggravated insider trading – the hardest punishment for insider trading in Sweden ever.
Danish and international consumers prioritise better animal welfare over a smaller climate footprint if they must pay a higher price for their pork. This is shown by a new study from the University of Copenhagen, which has also examined consumer priorities in Germany, Great Britain, Shanghai and China.
Five years ago, the English frozen food concept Iceland entered the Norwegian grocery market through a franchise agreement. Since 2018, Iceland Norway has suffered a total loss of over NOK 40 million for the Norwegian investors. The chain had at most six stores in Norway, but four were closed earlier this year, according to Dagens Næringsliv. Brexit is part of the problem.
Many analysts and experts laughed at Lidl when the German chain first established in Great Britain in 1994. Now the chain has a market share of 7.6 percent in GB and no less than 9.1 percent in London!
Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, has announced initial commitments from the country's top five grocery chains to stabilize food prices.
In Sweden and Finland, the competition authorities have conducted a coordinated raid against several food suppliers. The companies are suspected of coordinating purchase and sale prices.
Nestlé is ranked the world’s most valuable food brand by Brand Finance, a consultancy. Coca-Cola is not surprisingly ranked as the most valuable non-alcoholic beverage brand.
We see it all over Europe. Discounters take market shares from supermarkets. It happens in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and UK to name a few markets.
Global convenience store giant 7-Eleven has begun a test run of a robot delivery service in South Korea in conjunction with Neubility, a South Korean startup.
Forget Volo, forget Coca-Cola, forget Ikea. Until less than a year ago, Sweden's strongest brand was ICA. Now it is history! How can such a strong brand break down in less than two years?
Lidl tried to build a business in Norway from 2004 to 2008 but had to pull out with significant losses. In Sweden, on the other hand, which besides lower import tariffs, in many ways is not entirely unlike Norway, Europe's largest grocery chain is doing well.
“It is not the supermarkets that have shovelled money into the inflationary year 2022,” emphasizes Salling Group's outgoing CEO, Per Bank. “Carlsberg earns 12 times more than grocery retailers in Denmark, it is not fair”, he stresses.
For the seventh year in a row, ICA publishes its future report – this year the focus is communication and marketing. The report examines AI (artificial intelligence), the emergence of new business models and what the future of sustainability work looks like.
Tesco’s fresh request that its suppliers should contribute more towards the cost of fulfilling online orders could result in other retailers copying their move. It is obviously a development that the suppliers do not want, in Great Britain or other markets.
Dagrofa makes progress in 2022 results despite difficult market conditions. The food service and logistics businesses pull up the overall result. CEO Tomas Pietrangeli has succeeded in stopping the losses in Dagrofa and has now delivered two years of profits.
The 200 participants who attended the NHH Food conference 13 March participated in a seminar full of professionalism and competence. NHH Food is now, arguably, the most important conference of the year - on the grocery market.
Some quarters claim that competition in the grocery retail sector in Norway is too weak. There is no basis for such conclusions, according to the master students Adrian Jacobsen & Douglas Jansson at NHH. On the contrary, there is much evidence that Norwegian grocery retailers are the most efficient in Scandinavia.
Danske Coop stop home deliveries due to lack of volumes and profit and terminates the leases on a number of warehouse buildings throughout the country.
"We are leaving a year that has been exceptionally turbulent. We had a lower result and margins than last year in ICA Sweden and in addition the profit sharing from the ICA stores is lower compared to 2021", comments CEO Nina Jönsson.
With inflation driving significant increases in production costs and retail prices across most major markets IGD emphasize that there will be a concentrated focus from retailers and suppliers on driving out costs and improving the efficiency of supply chains.
In Denmark, Aldi is selling out to Norwegian Rema 1000 after losing millions and millions in the Danish grocery market over several decades. In the UK, Aldi has never done better with market share growth and increased profitability. The big difference is not entirely obvious.
German Aldi has never made money in Denmark. Amazingly Rema 1000 has made money from day one, since Odd Reitan opened the first Danish store in 1994. The success of Rema is one of the reasons why Aldi has sold most of its Danish stores to the Norwegians.
While ICA is losing market share, it seems that arch-competitor, Axfood, is gaining market share.
“Since late summer, the difficult economic situation has become obvious to all of us and higher costs greatly affect the behaviour of our customers who prioritize low price and increase the proportion of low-price products when shopping,” says Per Strömberg about the results in ICA for the third quarter.
The buyout will form one of the world's absolute largest retail companies and number two in USA, only behind Walmart.
The goal is for solar energy to cover at least 25 percent of Salling Group's energy consumption in 2028.
Per Strömberg has chosen to leave ICA Gruppen, where he has served as CEO since 2012. The Board of Directors has appointed Nina Jönsson as the new CEO. She is currently CEO of Plantagen, a garden chain.
Maybe the American grocery chain Kroger should be a role model for other retail chains in the world? Maybe for many authorities too? It is not a human right not to be vaccinated, but a duty to take the immunisation, Kroger has decided.
The world's largest food and beverage producer, Nestlé, is selling parts of its equity portfolio in L'Oreal, a world-renowned manufacturer and marketer of beauty products.
The world's second largest grocery chain and founder of the format hypermarkets, French Carrefour, recently opened its new “Flash store” in Paris.
The Swedish grocery giant, ICA, no longer wants to be in the stock market's open spotlight, but wish to go private, behind more closed doors. Maybe because it will be more difficult for competitors to “read” ICA?
In the current inflationary environment, where FMCG manufacturers are looking to pass on the full impact of cost increases to consumers, retailers in many markets are strategically poised to hold prices of their private label products in categories where they want to increase penetration and grow value sales.
Shareholders in Morrisons have approved CD&R’s £7.1bn takeover offer, bringing the curtain down on a fiercely contested battle for the UK’s fourth-largest grocer.
Considering the great focus on climate change throughout the world, Coop Denmark has set itself a goal of reducing its CO2 emissions by 75 percent by 2025.
Tesco’s forecast for full-year earnings are impressive. Nonetheless there are considerable headwinds ahead, but the company benefits from a robust supply chain.
Covid has created supply problems in all industries all over the world the past year. The combination of Brexit in the UK and Covid triples the challenges. Iceland, the frozen food chain in the UK, warns that there may be empty shelves for Christmas.
Fakta is no longer Denmark’s second largest grocery chain. Rema 1000 has taken that position with 353 stores against Fakta’s 340 stores. However, the lead dog is still Netto, owned by The Salling group, with 516 discount stores.
Industry slippage or industry mix, as some prefer to call it, is nothing new, but nonetheless very important in all retailing. This year it is one of the main topics at the FOOD conference.
Ica Sweden did not have the same growth as the market during the second quarter. It also includes e-commerce which is related to the very strong volume increase that the Ica stores managed to achieve last year when they grew much faster than the market.
Morrisons’, Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket group after Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda, has agreed a 6.3-billion-pound ($8.7 billion) takeover by a trio of investment groups led by Fortress Investment Group.
US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice is expected to push ahead with its pursuit of Morrisons despite an initial offer at £5.5bn being rejected. Analysts believe the UK’s fourth largest supermarket chain could also attract bids from other companies, including Amazon.
As North American consumers begin to adjust to the next normal, McKinsey, a global and prestigious consultancy, anticipate that the landscape of winners and losers in grocery will cease to be determined by format.
