Although the company hasn´t expressly thanked you, as the headline suggests, they probably would like to as thanks to you paying more in their supermarkets during a cost-of-living crisis their profits increased by 75% to 101.1 million euro.
And, in case there is any doubt, and you think it is due to their expansion, sales have only increased by 13.6%, to just short of 4.4 billion euro, and so that 75% profit boost has come from somewhere other than the increase in sales.
The facts were detailed this week by the general director of the cooperative, Antonio Rodríguez, in a press conference.
Rodríguez has attributed this strong increase in the result for the year to the growth in the cooperative’s sales volume by 6.5%, compared to the market growth of 0.9%, in addition to an increase in market share in its field. influence by 0.3 to 13.4%, according to Nielsen. A result that, as he explained, responds to better management with lower spending on electricity (one of the general reasons for higher prices was the increase in electricity costs you might remember, something we are all still paying) and a better adjustment of costs.
“We come from years that have tested our organisation in many ways, especially in the last four we have overcome many challenges,” he noted. Some “successes” that he has attributed to Juan Luis Durich, who left the company a few months ago due to his retirement. Rodríguez has highlighted the high inflation in 2023 due to the increase in price costs at origin, the higher production costs due to energy or logistics issues, but has insisted that Spanish food distribution is the most competitive in Europe.
“Maintaining these prices is the only way to not lose the market and we are as competitive as the best,” he stressed. “We continue to maintain efforts to adjust costs and a policy of price containment.” In this sense, he has indicated an adjustment of 1% of the gross margin, which he has quantified at 40 million euro. In 2023, Consum increased its sales at constant surface area by 10.2%, results with which the cooperative maintains sixth place in the national ranking of distribution companies by surface area, increasing its share by 0.1 to 4.6%. of the national market.
There is some positive news, because not only have your contributions assisted their increase in profits, if you shop at Consum you have also contributed to employment, Consum created 1,789 new jobs in 2023, reaching a workforce of 21,216 workers, 9.7% more than the previous year.
