A growing trend of supermarkets offering online food shopping and self-drive pick-up in France will boost the number of retail warehouses there by 30% to 1,300 in 2012 from 1,000 in 2011, according to property adviser Savills.
A growing trend of supermarkets offering online food shopping and self-drive pick-up in France will boost the number of retail warehouses there by 30% to 1,300 in 2012 from 1,000 in 2011, according to property adviser Savills.
The number of warehouse properties built or refurbished purely for e-commerce services is expected to almost double to 300 in 2012 from 180 in 2011, suggesting that the trend is driving turnover of major French hypermarket retailers such as Auchan, Leclerc and Carrefour.
According to Savills, the rise in demand is being driven by the higher profit margins that hypermarkets which offer an e-commerce service can secure. The firm estimates that hypermarket profit margins without e-commerce are on average 2-3%, whereas food retailers operating a drive concept could achieve a margin of around 5%.
Lydia Brissy, European research director, said that e-commerce accounted for EUR 38 mln of consumer spending in France last year and is set to increase. ‘If e-commerce continues to expand at the same pace as recorded over the past four years, we anticipate this figure to exceed EUR 45 mln by the end of 2012,’ she said. ‘Supermarket retailers are responding to this demand which is having a major impact on the warehouse market across France,’ she added.
