Dutch wholesale and retail grow Sligro has posted a net profit of €73 million in full year 2016, a decrease of 9.1% on the previous year.
The profit update follows the publication of the group's sales earlier this month, which indicated that Sligro saw sales of €2.81 billion last year, an increase of 5.4%.
"The theme of 2016 was ‘Building the future’," chief executive Koen Slippens commented on the group's profit performance. "As is often the case when you are building something, you have to make investments before you can reap the benefits.
"As previously stated, profit for 2016 was below the record year of 2015, which had 53 weeks, which means that we did not perform as well as we had expected at the beginning of the year."
Due to the growth of the market in food retail, for example, where Sligro operates the EMTÉ banner, its market share fell to 2.6%.
"During the year, we narrowed the gap between us and market growth, thanks in part to the conversion of outlets to the EMTÉ 3.0 format and we now have 15 of these stores," Slippens added.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up for ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
