Spanish cooperative retailer Consum has appointed Antonio Rodríguez Lázaro as its new general manager, effective from 1 February 2024.
Currently, Rodríguez Lázaro serves as Consum’s director of store management – a role that he took up in 2012.
He is an experienced professional who started his journey with the cooperative in 1992, serving in various roles, including organisational functions and managing hypermarkets with responsibility for the fresh-produce logistics area.
In 1997, Rodríguez Lázaro joined the board of directors as director of IT and systems.
In 2005, he took over the management of the newly created partner-customer department, which combined the functions of partner-customer relations, marketing and loyalty, communication, quality, and institutional relations.
He stepped in as the director of logistics at the cooperative in 2008, before assuming his current role.
Throughout his career at Consum, Rodríguez Lázaro has managed different key areas, which has given him a broad knowledge of the organisation and the business that will be his basis as general manager of Consum.
Juan Luis Durich Esteras
In his new role, Rodríguez Lázaro succeeds Juan Luis Durich Esteras, who has decided to retire after 30 years in the position.
Durich Esteras, was appointed as the general manager of the cooperative in 1993. Consum has since gone from having a workforce of 1,710 people and sales of €273.38 million to becoming the sixth-largest food distribution company in Spain.
During this period, the cooperative decided to disassociate itself from the Eroski Group and resume activity on its own, a step it took in 2004.
Consum has since seen growth accelerate, with a sales turnover of €3.9 billion in 2022, a workforce of 19,337 people, and a sales network of more than 874 supermarkets throughout the Mediterranean arc, from Andalusia to Catalonia.
