That the Consum cooperative is an eminently Mediterranean company can be deduced from its extensive presence both in the Valencian Community, where its headquarters and 53.4% of its stores are located, and in Catalonia, where it locates 28.1% of its supermarkets. The remainder is distributed between Castilla-La Mancha (9%) and Aragón (0.8%), but also in Murcia (5.1%) and Andalusia (3.6%).
In this past year of increased profits and also turnover, which the cooperative reported yesterday, it launched up to 67 new supermarkets, where a good part of the 167.3 million euros of its total investment went. A Mediterranean commitment that has been consolidated a little more if possible this past year, when the company opened up to 26 new supermarkets in Catalonia, 25 of them Charter, in towns such as Badalona, Rubí or Mataró, among others.
Also 18 of its new openings were in the Valencian Community and another 9 in Andalusia, all regions with a strong tourist presence, a phenomenon to which the supermarket chain is no stranger. “Consum has a specific weight in the Valencian Community, Andalusia, Murcia and Catalonia, all of which are tourist-oriented, so the better tourism goes, the better it goes for us,” said its general director, Antonio Rodríguez Lázaro. In a year that looks set to be a record year again in tourism, the manager assumes that the growth of that sector "will also benefit us."
At the moment the company is not considering making the leap to another autonomous community in which they no longer have a presence and they are planning their expansion province by province and always counting as a reference that there is a logistics warehouse in a nearby area.
In this way, the company makes prudence a flag, and even for its forecasts. For 2024 the forecast is to grow by 5%: “We have made conservative forecasts. It is true that inflation is going to help us little or practically nothing, so we are very cautious in our forecasts because we want a cooperative that lasts 200 years,” he said.
As a balance, the general director analyzed the evolution of the cooperative, which has been overcoming “all the challenges; “We are very satisfied with the evolution of the cooperative, since 2020 we have had an unpredictable situation every year.” He also highlighted the increase in market share in a complex year in which “we have made a very important effort in competitiveness”, in price and also in winning over the customer.
With an increase of 4.7%, the cooperative added a total of 4.5 million member-customers this year in 2023 who bought in one of its 933 stores or in its online version. “The behavior has stabilized. In the fresh section we have done exceptionally well and with the own brand, the same," said Rodríguez, who observes in this first quarter of the year a "calmer" consumption, also linked to the reduction in the CPI.
Online sales also grew: with a service that reaches 431 towns, these increased by 10%, reaching 73.6 million euros, 1.7% of sales. “There has been a reduction since 2020 as the ticket was reduced, since the cost of buying online has grown, but for us this is a complementary and minority channel. In Spain, we like to be on the street and talk to people, it is going to be a not very significant market in the short term unless there is a big disruptive change,” he predicted. However, the good functioning of the online channel in Valencia has motivated the company to look for a location for a logistics warehouse that provides service coverage. “When you reach a level of orders in an area, you are interested in changing the model and that point has already been reached in Valencia,” he noted.
