Albert Heijn lost around 35 to 45 million euros in turnover due to strikes in its five distribution centres. Data agency Hiiper calculated this at the request of NOS. The agency compared supermarket sales in the last seven days of the strikes to those in the previous week.

Based on average days examined, Hiiper has seen Albert Heijn’s market share decline. Fewer people shopped there last week, and they also spent less money. Joep Smeets of Hiiper: “It’s usually around €19 per basket, you see that amount go down in those seven days.”

“Now every week it’s not the same in terms of turnover, especially in an unusual week because of King’s Day, but the drop in turnover is related to the competition. And the average supermarket fluctuations aren’t that big on a weekly basis. With those kinds of amounts, that has Significant impact “.

According to the agency, Albert Hagen has an average turnover of €350 million per week. “We see 12 percent of that is down in the last seven days.” Not every day has the same turnover: Smeets notes that sales volume over the weekend is much greater than it was during the week.

Distribution center employees have been on strike since Sunday 23 April. For ten days, fewer or no products were brought to stores and that was noticeable across the country. Employees went on strike following a call from trade unions FNV and CNV, after negotiations over a new collective labor agreement stalled.

A few days later, it was found that the supermarket shortage in the northeast and southwest of the country was the largest. This can also be seen in the numbers, Smits says: “In the Northeast counties, the number of clients decreased by 10 percent in the period under review.” Albert Heijn brought in 7 percent fewer customers nationwide last week.

The data analysis agency sees customers behaving differently than usual because of the often empty shelves. “People have to get their food somewhere, so it makes sense to think they went to a different supermarket.”

According to Hiiper, in general, all other supermarkets seem to benefit from this, “but at first glance, service supermarkets like Plus and Coop seem to benefit the most.”

According to market researcher NielsenIQ, Albert Heijn has a market share in the Netherlands of more than 35 percent. Number two, Jumbo, is at 21.5 percent. Parent company Ahold Delhaize had a turnover of €87 billion last year.

A spokesperson for Albert Heijn says “don’t make any statements about such matters”. Albert Heijn and the unions will discuss the new collective labor agreement again next week.