Sales at Lidl Austria increase to 1.2 billion Euros

Just like the previous year, Lidl Austria continued to grow in the financial year 2016/2017, and with 1.2 billion Euros, net sales rose by almost 10%. The construction industry, the labor market, and domestic agriculture, all benefited of this growth.

Lidl Austria is still going strong: "Almost 20 years ago, the first branch opened in Austria and we have experienced a healthy growth ever since; nowadays Lidl has stores at 220 locations and there will be more in future," stated a positive Christian Schug, Chairman of the Executive Board. He continued: “In the last five years, we created around 1,500 new jobs and we will continue to expand and create even more jobs."

With the planned growth, the number of employees will continue to rise too, so Lidl Austria is constantly on the lookout for reinforcements for their team. Recently the fact that Lidl Austria has been a very good employer was confirmed again. For the fourth time in a row, the company has been recognized as one of the best employers in Austria by the independent "Great Place to Work" institute. For the first time, Lidl Austria even managed to reach the top in the Extra Large category (companies with more than 500 employees) making it Austria's "best employer" in this category! This is not a coincidence, as the company has been taking good care of its employees for many years. For instance, at the beginning of March the minimum wages were increased again. So, according to the collective agreement, this means a monthly salary of at least 1,754 Euros (starting salary in salary range A) or EUR 1,921 (starting salary in salary range B) for 167 hours (instead 1,546 Euros). This is an increase of 25% compared to the collective agreement.

Last year Lidl Austria decided to participate with the audit “Job-and-Family”, an initiative of the Austrian Ministry of the Family, and become a member of the network “Companies for Families”. Since March 2017, and as a part of the audit “Job-and-Family”, Lidl offer its employees something called “Family time”. Employees have a better opportunity to combine private and professional life with this “Daddy-time”. Lidl Austria has already implemented various other measures, for instance employees have the opportunity to use flexitime and create even more flexible working hours. Furthermore, employees can take a sabbatical of three months. For employees taking parental leave, Lidl Austria also created opportunities; for example, they can take part in further training courses and company events during their absence.

With 13 new stores and 20 refurbished stores during the last year alone, Lidl Austria has continued to advance its expansion on a quantitative and qualitative level. The planning is to open up to 8 stores per year for the coming years. The Austrian construction industry and the labor market benefit from these developments, as about 100 million Euros was invested in the construction and refurbishments. Lidl Austria values the participation of local and regional companies and continues to invest in the Austrian economy. 

The construction and refurbishment of Lidl stores is not the only way the Austrian economy profits. Currently, about 50 Austrian suppliers benefit from the Lidl sales network, which has more than 10,000 stores in 30 countries around the world. In the past year, Austrian suppliers and manufacturers achieved a turnover of about 650 million Euros through their cooperation with Lidl, mainly with fresh produce. Over four million bottles of Austrian wine, more than 500 metric tons of sausages and 1,500 metric tons of cheese found their way to Lidl stores across Europe. The most important customer is still Germany. Local food producers have been making around 200 million Euros through exports to other Lidl companies in Europe alone. All these developments are valuable contributions to strengthening the food industry and preserving rural communities in Austria.