Johannesburg-listed The Spar Group, which fully acquired BWG about four years ago, released its results for its 2025 financial year last week. The Irish business recorded revenue of over \u20ac1.74bn and pre-tax profit of almost \u20ac48.1m.<\/p>\n
Angelo Swartz, group CEO of The Spar Group, said Ireland continues \u201cto validate the strength of the independent retailer model\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe takeaway is this, Ireland is not dependent on a single lever,\u201d he said. \u201cIts resilience comes from channel diversity, disciplined pricing, and a strong network of retailers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt an operational level, the recovery in the second half was meaningful. Retail performance improved with food inflation normalising and strong summer weather.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moegamat Reeza Isaacs, group chief financial officer at The Spar Group, said the Irish convenience retail sector was \u201cvery competitive\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Isaacs said he believed the Irish retail market was \u201cmature\u201d, and that BWG is exploring opportunities to acquire stores when owners want to retire.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we are taking a careful look at the stores and the returns they generate before we acquire them,\u201d he added. \u201cWe declined some of them this year as they do not meet the required hurdle rates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Isaacs also spoke about the sale of The Spar Group\u2019s businesses in Poland and Switzerland, indicating potential upsides for Ireland going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese businesses did not fit the investment thesis of the group and will drag on not just capital and returns, but also management time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will focus available capital and our time on South Africa and Ireland going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Swartz also praised BWG\u2019s Brevato coffee brand, which he said was in 30 stores. He believed the brand was a \u201cgood example of how we\u2019re driving incremental basket value and high-margin convenience\u201d.<\/p>\n
The messages about BWG and Spar\u2019s Irish business come as the convenience retailer works through a new strategy for its Spar business.<\/p>\n
In April, John Moane, the recently appointed chief executive of BWG, shared details of the new business strategy with the Sunday Independent.<\/p>\n
The convenience retail group plans to increase its Spar store network to 450 outlets nationwide over the next three years, up from 420. The CEO forecast a \u20ac30m investment, predominantly in new stores and the revamp of some existing sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johannesburg-listed The Spar Group, which fully acquired BWG about four years ago, released its results for its 2025…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,5913],"class_list":["post-191567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sean-pollock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}