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Supermarket chain Spinneys us be coming to town: The UAE-headquartered franchisee of supermarket chain Spinneys plans to open several stores in Saudi this year, the company said in its prospectus (pdf) ahead of its IPO of a 25% stake on the Dubai Financial Market (pdf).
Its local partners: Members of Al Hokair family, including Sami, Musaad, and Majed Abdul Mohsen, who will hold a 50% in the joint venture through which Spinneys will enter Saudi.
The supermarket chain is expanding into Saudi for the first time: Spinneys plans to open its first store here in 1H 2024, it said in its intention to float, and aims to open another three by the end of the year and at least four new stores in the Kingdom every year for the next five to 10 years, CEO Sunil Kumar told Bloomberg in separate remarks.
Look for a June opening in Riyadh, Kumar told Reuters, with a total of three more between the capital and Jeddah set to welcome shoppers before year’s end. “These are the two cities we are targeting because that’s where our customer base — affluent, high disposable income customers — is living.”
The company will open in La Strada, KAFD, U-Walk Jeddah, and U-walk Riyadh, it said in its prospectus, with leases on the first two already in hand.
Spinneys claims the local market already knows it: Despite having no stores in Saudi, “30% of 511 people surveyed in Riyadh in April 2022 by Nielsen have an awareness of the Spinneys brand and 70% of the people surveyed responding they would consider visiting a Spinneys store,” it said.
The company isn’t saying how much it has earmarked for investment in Saudi, saying in its prospectus only that investment here is “supported by structural tailwinds … including a projected 6.4% CAGR in the KSA’s [sic] affluent population between 2022 and 2028” and the growing contribution of the non-oil economy as the Kingdom becomes one of the world’s top 15 economies by 2030. Saudi has the “largest population and the largest grocery market in the GCC region,” it noted.
Fast facts: Spinneys’ first ever store was established in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1924, by Arthur Spinney. It later established its presence in the UAE in the 1960s, before expanding into Oman in 2003 with the operation of Al Fair. It also brought Waitrose into the UAE in 2008. While the Spinneys brand name is also used in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, it does so through trademark licensing agreements inked with Spinneys Dubai.
EnterpriseAM UAE has more on the planned IPO here. Shares should start trading on 9 May, it reports.
