Discount Retail Chain Lidl Spain (owned by the German Schwarz Group) continues adding milestones in its growth in the Spanish market. The German company reached a market share of 7% in December, a figure achieved for the first time since its implementation in Spain, according to the latest data updated by Kantar Worldpanel, and which consolidates its growth path that has accelerated in the last two years.
Specifically, the German discounter gained one tenth compared to the figure for November, enough to reach a level that in Spain had not been surpassed by three operators since the end of 2018. The discounter Dia crisis and its subsequent restructuring, with an important plan to close stores, has dropped its weight in the market above that 7% to around the current 5%. Lidl, which gave it the sorpasso after the strict confinement of March and April 2020 as the third operator in Spain, continues to open a gap and establish itself in that position, although still far from Carrefour, which remains at 9.3%, and still More from Mercadona. Of course, the leader of the sector left four tenths from November to December, going from 25% to 24.6%.
In the last three years, Lidl has significantly accelerated its growth and its weight in the sector at a national level. At the beginning of 2019, its share reached 5%, and since then it has added two more points of share. As the Kantar data shows, it took five years to go from 3% to 5%.
In these last three years, the company that Claus Grande directs in Spain has allocated close to 970 million in store openings, about 40 per year, and in new logistics centers . The last one that has begun to build is the one located in the Granada town of Escúzar, in which it will invest 85 million and which will begin operating in 2023.
The share gain will continue over the next few years, while Lidl plans to open 150 stores by 2024, with which it will exceed 800 stores.
The weight that the German operator has in the Spanish market is already greater than it has, for example, in the United Kingdom, and practically similar to that it has in France . There it exceeded 7% also in December and in the first weeks of January it reached 7.2%, according to data from Kantar itself.
In the British market its share is 6.4%, being the sixth operator. In this case, it is below its great rival, Aldi, which is close to 8% there. In Spain, it continues to grow and approaches a 2% share. This year it plans to open 50 stores.
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