Sales made by stores under the banner of the leader in food distribution in France, the group of independent distributors E.Leclerc, grew by 8.5% including fuel in 2022, said Monday in the specialized media LSA Michel- Edouard Leclerc. “2022 was an opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of our model”, declares in LSA the president of the strategic committee of the E.Leclerc centers, Michel-Édouard Leclerc. “We ended the year, all channels combined, with an increase in turnover of almost 4%, to 43.9 billion euros excluding fuel, and 8.5% with gasoline, to 55.6 Billions of Euro’s.
E.Leclerc, like Intermarché or Système U in France, is a group of independent stores, where store owners have more leeway than in so-called integrated groups, such as Carrefour or Auchan for example. This is the reason why these groups only communicate on their sales, not on their net income, which depends on the orientations and the financial situation of each member of the group. E.Leclerc has 544 “members” operating a total of 734 stores.
It is in any case the leader in food distribution in France, ahead of Carrefour (42 billion euros in turnover in France excluding fuel, 3.4%), Intermarché (36 billion euros excluding fuel, 2.3%), System U (23.9 billion euros excluding fuel, 4%), Auchan (16.7 billion euros excluding fuel, 1.7%), Lidl (French data not provided) and Casino (14.2 billion euros, excluding petrol, 1%). The E.Leclerc group as a whole claims to employ around 140,000 people in France.