2025 is a year of “returns” of the strategic business transformation for AB Vassilopoulos, a subsidiary of the Belgian-Dutch group Ahold Delhaize, with the first signs appearing encouraging, the CEO of AB Vassilopoulos, Nikos Lavidas, stated in the context of a journalistic trip organized by the chain in Eastern Macedonia.
“This year has started well. In the first quarter, we are on track with the targets we had set. At the moment, there is no high sectoral inflation and any growth that comes is from sales. For us, the most important thing this year is to stabilize and increase our share as much as possible and of course to protect the bottom line on the balance sheet as much as possible in particularly challenging conditions.”
He added that: “We have drawn up a plan for three years and we are following it faithfully regardless of what the competition does. The three basic elements of the plan focus, as we have announced, on variety, and a special emphasis on private label codes, on investing in fresh products – where we estimate that in this way a differentiation in quality is achieved – and on the rationalization of the network. We remain steadfast behind these three basic lines and are now starting to see positive messages in terms of the results we expected. We are exactly where we had calculated and that is the most important thing. Two years of preparation took place and we laid the foundations. From this year we expect returns. We have reached the fullness of time.”
Sales in 2024 moved at the levels of 2023, namely around 1.97 billion euros, while a stable performance at 26% is said to have maintained the gross profit margin.
