Germany: 300 new stores at Lidl and Kaufland: Schwarz Group continues to grow
- DRC Discount Retail Consulting GmbH
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
Discount Retail Chain Lidl`s mother company the Schwarz Group from Neckarsulm (Heilbronn district) opened 300 new Lidl and Kaufland stores worldwide in the past fiscal year. This was announced by the company. With the growth, new jobs are also being added. In the course of this, the Schwarz Group created around 20,000 new jobs, 4,000 of them in Germany. Even in a time of global uncertainty, it has been possible to grow and continue to invest in Germany as a business location and a digitally sovereign Europe, said Schwarz CEO Gerd Chrzanowski.
High investments of the Schwarz Group
Despite the tense economic situation, the Group invested around 3.3 billion euros in Germany. According to the company, the money was mainly invested in new stores, the expansion of warehouse locations and the capacity of data centers in Europe. In the current fiscal year, investments of 3.7 billion euros are planned in Germany.
Sales at Lidl and Kaufland are no longer growing so fast
Sales of the Group as a whole rose by 4.9 percent to 175.4 billion euros. In 2023, however, growth was still 8.5 percent. For example, the group's online sales are stagnating. At Kaufland and Lidl, too, sales growth did not increase as strongly as in previous years.
In Germany, Lidl sees itself as the industry leader among discounters. According to a study by the market research company Nielsen IQ, however, the Schwarz Group was in third place in the German food trade last year behind the Edeka and Rewe groups.
The Schwarz Group
The Schwarz Group, headquartered in Neckarsulm (Heilbronn district), has 595,000 employees worldwide. It is a leading international retail group with around 14,200 stores. In the 2024 financial year, the Schwarz Group companies generated total sales of 175.4 billion euros. With their ecosystem, they cover the entire value chain: from production and trade to recycling and digitalization. Lidl and Kaufland form the pillars of the food retail sector and are represented in 32 countries.
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