Page 15 - PET worldwide issue 01/2022

Review of the year

Plenty of action on

the retail front

Pet product retailers attracted a lot of attention last year. Two
big players were particularly prominent: Fressnapf and

Zooplus.

There was a lot going on at Eu- Zoo stores in Italy by the inves- Fressnapf close to its head office
rope’s leading pet store chain. tor Cinven and the future minority in Krefeld in August.
Self-confidence abounded at holding of the Fressnapf Group in
the annual press conference: the Arcaplanet Group prompted Takeover manoeuvring
the Fressnapf Group ended its raised eyebrows among many After dragging on for months,
anniversary year in 2020 with suppliers, along with specula- the takeover battle for Zooplus
record annual sales of 2.65 bn tion about Fressnapf’s strategy finally came to an end in Novem-
euros, equivalent to an increase going forward. It also emerged ber. The repeatedly revised bid by
of 351 mio euros or 15.2 per that Fressnapf was merging the the two financial investors Hell-
cent. In international opera- country subsidiaries in Austria man & Friedman (H&F) and EQT
tions, the ten country subsidiar- and Switzerland into an Alpine eventually received the blessing
ies notched up sales in excess region partnership with a joint of the shareholders. 480 euros
of 1 bn euros for the first time. management team and one per share implies an equity val-
Sales of 1.09 bn euros equated headquarters. Hermann Aigner, uation of Zooplus of around 3.7
1 The Italian antitrust authority
to growth of 20.3 per cent or formerly the managing director bn euros. Roughly 82 per cent of does not want to wave through a
183 mio euros. All country sub- in Austria, will head the new en- the shareholders supported the merger of Arcaplanet and Maxi Zoo
sidiaries recorded a double- terprise. acquisition bid. On completion (Fressnapf) without further ado.
digit increase in sales. The last XXL store for the of the deal, Zooplus is expected 2 The acquisition wrangling over
At the start of July, the sur- present, with a retail area of to be taken out of the stock ex- Zooplus held the sector’s attention
prise acquisition of 120 Maxi- 1 500 m², was then opened by change. n for several months.

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