Lidl and Kaufland Open 300 New Stores Worldwide

This marks a continuation of their expansion: In recent years, Lidl and Kaufland have steadily expanded their network of stores. In total, they now operate around 14,500 stores in 33 countries.

Total revenue for the group founded by Dieter Schwarz rose by 5.8 percent to 185.6 billion euros. Lidl alone accounted for over 140 billion euros—6.1 percent more than the previous year. The increase was primarily due to the expansion of the store network and customer growth in Europe.

Kaufland generated revenue of 36.7 billion euros (up 4.3 percent). The Schwarz Group did not provide any details on earnings. The fiscal year runs from the beginning of March to the end of February of the following year.

All Divisions Show Revenue Growth

In addition to the two retail chains, PreZero, the waste management and recycling company belonging to the group, also contributed to revenue with 4.1 billion euros (up 5.1 percent). The IT and digital division Schwarz Digits generated revenue of 2.2 billion euros. According to the figures, the growth of nearly 16 percent is largely attributable to the growing demand for cloud solutions.

Schwarz has long been active as an IT service provider and aims to position itself as a European alternative to providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. To this end, the company is, among other things, building a multi-billion-euro data center in Brandenburg.

9,000 new jobs in Germany

The group’s investments rose to around 9 billion euros—more than in the previous fiscal year, though less than expected. A total of 9,000 new jobs were created. Globally, the number of employees thus rose to around 604,000.

In the current fiscal year, investments are expected to grow to more than 10 billion euros, of which around 5 billion euros will be in Germany. The funds are to be allocated, among other things, to expanding market share in the core business as well as the group’s digital activities.