SPAR to expand its business in Kazakhstan

The first supermarket under the SPAR name opened in Almaty. The international company that runs a network of supermarkets in various countries is partnering with the local company SKIF TRADE (owner of the Small and Skif brands). The new site in Almaty is Eurospar, a type of supermarket for family shopping with 1,000 to 3,000 square meters of floor space. The new shop in Almaty is 2,400 square meters.

There are four types of SPAR supermarkets: Spar, Eurospar, Interspar and Spar Express. Spar is the most popular type of supermarket with 300 to 1,000 square meters of floor space. These stores are usually located in densely populated areas outside of downtown. As of 2022, there were 10,397 Spar supermarkets in total. They have generated 57.9% of the company’s annual revenue. For comparison, the company has just 1,283 Eurospar stores, although they account for 24.6% of all revenue the global network generates each year.

Another type, SPAR Express is a small store with 100 to 300 square meters of floor space. The company tries to put these stores in places with many potential customers (gas stations, airports and downtown centers) who might be interested in buying food to eat there or take away. SPAR’s last retail format is a giant Interspar/Hyperspar. These are hypermarkets of about 5,000 square meters of floor space where 50% of the assortment consists of non-food products.

As of the end of 2021, SPAR runs 1,577 SPAR Express stores that account for 3.6% of all sales globally. On the other hand, the same rate for 336 hypermarkets is 13.9%.

According to Demid Samoshkin, head of SPAR Kazakhstan, the company is going to bet on Eurospar and likely Spar formats. «We will also open SPAR Express stores, but won’t do the same with hypermarkets,» he said. 

SPAR Kazakhstan will open at least seven supermarkets in Kazakhstan by the end of next year. In terms of investments, such an expansion of new stores will require about $10.5 million within the next two years, noted Sergey Gadetskiy, executive director of the company.

So far, SPAR runs supermarkets in 49 countries including Kazakhstan. The vast majority of them are operated in the U.K. (2,512) in the format of SPAR Express (164 square meters of floor space). On the contrary, in India SPAR runs only hypermarkets of about 4,128 square meters of floor space on average. The company has been doing so there since 2014.