Market is saturated, but retailers keep expanding in Estonia

Estonia has already one of the highest retail space per capita figure in Europe, but retailers continue to open more stores, writes Äripäev. According to statistics, Estonia has 1.3 square metres of retail trade space per resident which is roughly similar to Germany’s level of 1.4 sqm.

Most East and Central European countries that are comparable to Estonia have less than 1 sqm of retail space per resident. At the same, purchasing power of Estonians is much lower than that of Germans which means there is simply too much retail space in Estonia. Still, most large grocery chains plans to open more stores.

ETK that has 256 grocery stores in Estonia plans to open another Maksimarket supermarket in Pärnu and one Konsum store in Tallinn this year. Prisma that had revenue of 177m opened the largest supermarket in Southern Estonia in 2012.

Lithuanian-owned Maxima is developing XX supermarkets and says that the supermarket business is clearly growing. Last year Maxima opened one XX store in Tallinn. During the year, Maxima opened 6 stores, including four XX and two X supermarkets. Last year Selver opened three new supermarkets and two gourmet stores. OG Elektra that belongs to Oleg Gross opened four new stores last year.

In a week it plans to open a new stores in Keila. At the end of August it will open a store in Paldiski and another in October in Jõhvi. As for Rimi, it plans to open at least three supermarkets this year, including one in Tartu and two in Tallinn. Revenue of six larger grocery chains operating in Estonia totaled EUR 1.7 billion last year.

In revenue share, market leader is ETK with 24.7%, followed by Rimi (21.1%), Maxima (19.8%), Selver (19.4%), Prisma (10.4%) and Grossi Toidukaubad (4.2%). 

Toomas Hõbemägi

Comments

[Dave Barnes]

USA has 4.3 sq meters of retail space per capita.
You people need to get to work.