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SPAR International B.V.

Company type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	1932; 92 years ago (1932)
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Number of locations	13,996 stores (worldwide, 2022)
Area served	Worldwide (48 countries as of 2022)
Products	Grocers' shops, convenience shops, discount shops, hypermarkets
Revenue	€43.5 billion (2022)
Number of employees	460,000 (2022)
Subsidiaries	BWG Foods
Website	spar-international.com

SPAR, originally "DESPAR", styled as "DE SPAR" (Dutch pronunciation: [də ˈspɑr]), is a Dutch multinational franchise that provides branding, supplies and support services for independently owned and operated food retail stores. It was founded in the Netherlands in 1932, by Adriaan van Well.

Its headquarters are in Amsterdam. The company operates a partnership programme and has a presence in most European countries, as well as throughout Asia, Africa and Oceania.

In fiscal year 2022, SPAR earned €43.5 billion in global sales, which represented a 5.6 percent increase over the previous year.

By 2024, the group had 13,900 stores in 48 countries.

Etymology

The name was originally DESPAR, an acronym of the Dutch phrase Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig 'Through united co-operation everyone profits regularly', which was used by Van Well to describe the brand. The acronym was chosen to resonate with the verb sparen, which (related to English spare) means "save " in Dutch and some other languages, among them German and Scandinavian languages (with variants such as spara or spare). Spar is Dutch for "spruce tree", after which the logo was chosen. As the organisation expanded across Europe, the name was abbreviated by dropping the DE prefix.

There are some international naming variants:

• In Hungary, 17 stores owned by SPAR located at Orlen (former Lukoil) filling stations operate under the name DESPAR. However, there are also many SPAR and INTERSPAR locations.
• In Italy, the name is still DESPAR, though in keeping with the international branding, the SPAR section of the logo is highlighted, and the larger shops are still called EuroSPAR and InterSPAR.
• In Austria, DESPAR is SPAR's Italian food product range. There are also EUROSPAR and INTERSPAR locations within Austria.
• In Croatia, SPAR and INTERSPAR locations run concurrently.
• In Arabia, the Latin letters SPAR are displayed next to the Arabic سبار (sbār).
• In Iran, it is called اسپار (Aspar).
• In China, it is known as 斯巴超市 (Sībā chāoshì, "Siba supermarket").
• In Ireland, Northern Ireland, Russia and Switzerland both the SPAR and EUROSPAR names are used, with EUROSPAR being used mostly for larger supermarket sized stores and SPAR for smaller convenience stores.
• In Slovenia both SPAR and INTERSPAR are used, with INTERSPAR being used for a larger supermarket sized stores and SPAR for smaller convenience stores

History

20th century

Spar was founded in 1932 in Zegwaart, Netherlands. In 1953, an International Spar office opened in Amsterdam to manage international expansion. Spar shops can be found in Europe, Australia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Cameroon, China, and India. Spar opened in Vanuatu on 1 December 2009, ending Au Bon Marché's grocery monopoly.

A Spar shop may be owned independently, by a franchise, or be part of a chain, depending on the model applied in any given country. The owners of the parent company vary from country to country and may include the shop owners themselves. The name and the current logo was most recently revised in 1968 by Raymond Loewy and has since remained unchanged.

In the United Kingdom, Spar was founded in 1959 and may be a supermarket or a convenience shop. In 1997, Spar was introduced to most United Kingdom military bases by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (Naafi), where it sells a variety of civilian and military products. In Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Spar brand is known for neighbourhood shops and also the subformat Eurospar acting as mini-supermarkets.

Since 1996, the company has been a major sponsor of the European Athletic Association and its events.

Spar stores in the Netherlands are members of Superunie, an inventory purchasing organisation for a number of otherwise unaffiliated supermarket brands.

In 1988, SPAR South Africa became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tiger Brands, a holding company with a large diversified portfolio. It was unbundled and listed as a separate company in 2004.

21st century

In July 2014, SPAR South Africa opened its first supermarket in Angola but no expansion of the brand is planned for this market. Since 2021, the group has 100% of BWG Foods, which had outlets in Ireland and southern Britain.

In 2015, Ahold acquired all 35 hypermarkets and 14 supermarkets from Spar Czechia for more than 5.2 billion Czech koruna. and converted them into Albert super- and hypermarkets. However, it had to divest itself of some shops in order not to have a monopoly.

The first SPAR shop in Oman was inaugurated in January 2015, in Muscat. Spar Oman had plans to open more shops over time as part of its expansion plans in Oman. Spar opened its first store in Qatar in 2017, with the second store opening in 2018. A further two stores were planned to open in 2018, but it got cancelled.

SPAR opened in Saudi Arabia in 2017, sublicensed to Al-Sadhan Group opening its first stores in Riyadh.

In 2017, Ceylon Biscuits Limited in Sri Lanka acquired a license to operate the Spar brand in Sri Lanka as Spar Lanka. This is a joint venture of Ceylon Biscuits Limited and SPAR South Africa. They opened the first store in Thalawathugoda, Colombo. The plan is to open 50 outlets in the country by 2023.

In 2020, there were more than 13,500 SPAR stores in 48 countries.

In 2022, SPAR International entered the Kazakhstan retail market.

In 2022, Israeli supermarket chain Shufersal announced plans to open SPAR stores in Israel; with 10 stores to be opened in the first three years of operation. Also in 2022, SPAR entered Latvia where by 2023 it opened 23 stores. A first Israeli Spar store was opened in 2024.

Shop types

In most, but not all countries, SPAR operates shops of different types and sub-brands: SPAR Express, SPAR Neighbourhood, EuroSPAR and InterSPAR.

EuroSPAR/SuperSPAR

The EuroSPAR name is used in Europe and SuperSPAR in South Africa. These are mid-sized supermarkets, designed to fit in a niche between convenience shops and traditional supermarkets.

InterSPAR

These are hypermarkets and compete directly against major international chains such as Real, Carrefour, and Tesco.

KwikSPAR

KwikSPAR, only found in South Africa, is a smaller quick stop shop for convenience, larger than the conventional SPAR Express and smaller than the normal SPAR. These stores tend to have extended trading hours, some operating as 24-hour convenience stores.

HOT SPAR

HOT SPAR was a brand of convenience stores licensed to franchisees in Japan.

SPAR Express

This is the smallest type of shop. They are designed for small sites and filling station forecourts, airports and train stations.

SPAR Drive-Thru

There was a drive-through SPAR on the Cliftonville Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This has now been converted to a Centra shop, and retained the drive-through for a while afterwards, but now no longer has one.

SPAR Gourmet

The Austrian Spar Group has around 50 supermarkets branded SPAR Gourmet, mainly in and around Vienna. They are smaller supermarkets that specialize in foods, with a reduced range of other household goods. They originate from the acquisition of retail units from the Julius Meinl coffee and tea chain in 2000.

International statistics

By 2024, the group had 13,900 stores in 48 countries.

• 255 distribution centres
• €41.2 billion total sales
• 410,000 SPAR colleagues
• 7.5 million m retail sales area
• 14.5 million customers per day

See also

• List of convenience stores

Notes

1. Dutch pronunciation: [doːr eːnˈdrɑxtəx ˈsaːmə(ɱ)ʋɛrkə(m) proːfiˈteːrə(n) ˈɑlə(n) reːɣəlˈmaːtəx]

References

1. ^ "SPAR Annual Review 2022". SPAR International. Retrieved 26 April 2024.
2. The first DESPAR store, opened in the Netherlands, 1932. Spar International. Archived 2017-06-06.
3. "About us". SPAR International. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
4. "Spar boss brings in Subway and Greggs to snatch grocery spend from retail giants". The Daily Telegraph. 28 November 2015. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
5. "About Us". spar-international.com. 2024..
6. ^ "The History of SPAR". SPAR International. Retrieved 21 August 2022.
7. "Englisch-Deutsch Wörterbuch". LEO. Retrieved 1 March 2015.
8. "SPAR – Some Untold stories - Reena D Souza". 25 May 2018.
9. "DESPAR" (in Hungarian). Lukoil Magyarország. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
10. "SPAR Italy". SPAR International. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
11. "DESPAR" (in German). SPAR Österreich. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
12. "Spar.at". Retrieved 21 November 2024.
13. "Interspar.at". Retrieved 30 January 2021.
14. "SPAR i INTERSPAR Hrvatska: mi smo tu za Vas". SPAR.hr. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
15. "Further expansion for SPAR in Qatar". SPAR International.
16. عروض سبار قطر من 12 حتى 16/6/2021. العروض اون لاين. 13 June 2021.
17. نت, تسوق (28 April 2021). عروض اليوم بفروع سبار السعودية من 28 إبريل حتى 4 مايو 2021 رمضان كريم. العروض اون لاين.
18. "اسپار – برای رفع نیازهای شما" (in Persian).
19. رازهای موفقیت و محبوبیت «اسپار». www.tejaratetalaeenews.ir (in Persian).
20. 斯巴超市 （Spar）是荷蘭的一家跨國零售企業，在全世界42個國家開設有約12.500個店鋪。斯巴超市創建於1932年。現在斯巴超市已經在大部分歐洲國家，部分非洲、亞洲、大洋洲. ww.cn.freejournal.org (in Chinese).
21. "SPAR SLOVENIJA".
22. "SPAR Country Figures". SPAR International. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
23. "SPAR Australia opens first Vanuatu shop: AUS". Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
24. "SPAR". Raymond Loewy Foundation. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
25. "Naafi allies with Spar". The Grocer. 22 March 1997. Naafi has chosen Spar as its retail partner to convert its 200 UK shops into a "world class operation for the next millennium". The contract, worth nearly £500 million over the next five years, was awarded after extensive trials with Costcutter and Londis.
26. "Athletics, Sprints and Sports Days". SPAR. Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 9 October 2009. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
27. Trade Intelligence – SPAR, accessed 2 October 2010
28. Mark Allix (12 August 2014). "Spar buys stake in Irish supermarkets". BusinessLIVE. Archived from the original on 26 October 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
29. "SPAR odchází z českého trhu, z padesáti prodejen budou Alberty". iDNES.cz. 11 March 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
30. Aguilar, Joey (2 April 2018). "Spar's flagship store opens at Tawar Mall". Gulf Times.
31. "Saudi Spar to open 40 branches by 2020". 2 February 2018.
32. "SPAR Sri Lanka". Retrieved 31 May 2018.
33. "* Spar continues expansion with entry into Sri Lanka". Retrieved 31 May 2018.
34. "SPAR CI Annual Review English". SPAR CI Annual Review English. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
35. "SPAR continues expansion with entry into Kazakhstan" (Press release).
36. "Shufersal in talks to open SPAR stores in Israel". Globes. 28 December 2022. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
37. "The international retail network "Spar" plans to start work in Latvia in the summer". www.lsm.lv (in Latvian). Retrieved 9 June 2022.
38. "'Elvi' franchise partner 'Banderi S.IDE' will join the 'Spar' network with dozens of stores". www.delfi.lv (in Latvian). Retrieved 6 February 2023.
39. Eric Pfanner (12 November 2004). "An international grocery giant is emerging from the shadows". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
40. "Shop formats". Spar International. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
41. Ians (28 January 2011). "SPAR to open 24 more hypermarkets in next two years". Sify. Archived from the original on 2 March 2012. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
42. Sedlák, Lubomír (3 February 2011). "CZECH: Spar looks to expand supermarket chain". just-food. Archived from the original on 11 July 2020. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
43. Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting (13 December 2007). ホットスパーが「COCO!」へ ["HOT SPAR" rebranded to "COCO!"] (in Japanese). Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting. Archived from the original on 2 May 2013. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
    • rough translation of relevant parts: "From next February, the convenience store chain 'HOT SPAR' will be renamed to 'COCO!'".; "[...] because the licensing contract with the Dutch firm SPAR International will expire on November next year"
44. "Shop formats". Spar South Africa. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
45. "Inquiry into Town Centre Regeneration". Northern Ireland Assembly Archive Site. 20 October 2009. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
46. "Chronologie: Von Konsum bis Rewe". Derstandard.at. 24 February 2008. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
47. "SPAR Gourmet". SPAR (in German). SPAR Österreichische Warenhandels-AG. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
48. "Julius Meinl veräußert Lebensmittelhandel an die Spar – Institution". APA-OTS Originaltext-Service (in German). Retrieved 24 August 2020.
49. "About Us". spar-international.com. 2024..

External links

• Media related to SPAR at Wikimedia Commons

• Companies based in Amsterdam
• Convenience stores
• Dutch brands
• Multinational companies headquartered in the Netherlands
• Purchasing consortia
• Retail companies established in 1932
• Dutch companies established in 1932
• Companies that have filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy