Albert Heijn strengthened its market leadership in 2024 with a market share increase from 36.8% to 37.7%, helped by the conversion of Jan Linders stores and an increase in branches, Distrifood reported based on figures from NielsenIQ. Jumbo saw a drop of 0.6 percentage points to 20.3%, growing the gap with Albert Heijn to 17.4 percentage points, its biggest margin since 2014. Plus increased its share from 7.7% to 8.1% due to the integration of Coop shops, while Coop fell from 1.7% to 1.2%. Spar rose slightly to 1.8%, despite fewer stores.
Other Superunion members such as Hoogvliet and Dekamarkt maintained their market share, while Aldi, Lidl, and some other formulas did not allow the publication of figures. Together, these formulas account for 25.5% of the market.
Albert Heijn reports that the increase is related to the 44 branches of supermarket chain Jan Linders that were acquired in mid-2023 and counted for a full year in 2024. The supermarket opened 13 new shops in the Netherlands and five in Flanders last year. This brought the total to 1,276 shops, including 185 AH to go's.
Albert Heijn's sales growth came partly from healthier and sustainable products. Sales of products with Nutri-Score A or B increased by 0.8% to 48.8%. Within the fruit and vegetable category, organic sales rose 16%. Customers also chose Albert Heijn's own brand more often last year, which now accounts for almost 55% of sales.
A key factor in FMCG's change in market relations is the legal cessation of tobacco sales in supermarkets from 1 July 2024. "In recent years, total tobacco sales in the supermarket channel were close to €2 billion a year or 4-4.5% of total sales. These sales are now completely gone. Some players had no (Aldi, Lidl) to little (Albert Heijn) tobacco sales; others (Spar, Plus, Jumbo) had a higher-than-average share. This is reflected in the changed market shares.
A second reason for the changes in market shares is the fact that NielsenIQ as well as Circana obtained cooperation from Lidl in 2024 and thus 'harder' sales data. Lidl's share in recent years was apparently higher than previously estimated. This led to a correction of the 2023 market shares: Lidl actually had a higher market share and thus the other players had a lower market share.
A third cause is the development of some players; some are just 'doing well':
Albert Heijn, which managed to capture over 60 Linders shops and also registered almost 10% of its sales online. Dirk and Vomar, which focus strongly on discount prices for A-brands (so-called brand discounters) and are thus successful in the current zeitgeist. Worth mentioning is the fact that Circana now also charts Picnic for the first time. Its market share is almost 2% of the total; comparable to a player like Hoogvliet!
The online share within the supermarket channel is approximately 7.4% of the total and is growing. Picnic, Albert Heijn, and Jumbo in particular contribute to this.
All measured and calculated market shares, shop numbers, and e-commerce figures can be viewed on the FMCG website and downloaded for free in Excel, including over 15 years of history.
Source: Distrifood, Albert Heijn