Things are heating up in the Norwegian retail market, with the arrival of a new player, frozen-food retailer Iceland. ESM spoke to Geir Olav Opheim, its chief executive. This article first appeared in ESM Issue 2, 2019.
Norwegian grocery has, traditionally, been a tough nut to crack. Between them, the country’s three largest retailers – NorgesGruppen, Coop and REMA 1000 – control almost the entire marketplace, leaving scant room for new upstarts (Lidl famously entered Norway in 2004, only to slide into obsolescence four years later).
Hoping to change that is Ice Nordic AS (also known as Iceland Mat), an independent franchise of UK-based frozen-food retailer Iceland, which opened its first store in Asker, in the greater Oslo region in May of last year, following it up with a second, in Larvik, a month later.
