Hypermarkets driving growth for ICA

Year 2021 was a challenging one for the Swedish grocery giant ICA as it was not able to reach market growth for several months during the last year.

Biggest challenges were faced by the mid-sized banners ICA Kvantum and ICA Supermarket, which had almost the same revenue as the year before. The overall growth for ICA was 1,0%. It remains to be seen how much the overall market has grown as Dgligvaruindex for the year is published in early February.

The growth for ICA was by its biggest and smallest banners, both in terms of sales and size. ICA Maxi, the hypermarkets, grew by 1,8% last year, which was slightly faster than 1,6% for ICA Nära. However, the growth of Macxi was partly driven by opening of new stores. In Like-for-Like growth, Nära was significantly better with 2,2% vs 1,0%.

For Nära the growth cannot explained by difficult last year, as Nära grew by 6,9% in 2020. Maxi grew even faster last year with 10,5%. It would be interesting to know how much of the growth for ICA Maxi has come from the online channel.