S Group's grocery sales in Finland increased by 5.2% to EUR 5 415 million. The increase continues to be higher than the general market development in the field.

"We are investigating what products are more popular than last year. Organic food is growing rapidly, and its euro-denominated sales increased by more than 10%. In addition, easy and time-saving ready-made meals have increased in popularity. The sale of vegetarian ready-made meals, in particular, has increased by more than 20%", says Taavi Heikkilä, CEO of SOK.

Convenience, quick meals and smooth services are trends to which S Group responds by developing its services and product range in all of its businesses.

"Customers want more time off and are very interested in making use of their customer data. They can make their purchases from us online and have them carried to their door or a separate pick-up location, refuel using a mobile app and access their data to see what they have actually bought", Heikkilä says.

The "Omat ostot (My purchases)" service recently published in S-kanava and in the new Säästäjä (Saver) app is already highly popular, and its number of users is growing rapidly. Almost 40,000 co-op members are already using the service.   

S Group's retail sales excluding taxes, Jan–Sep 2018

Business area

Sales (EUR million, entire S Group)

Change in comparison to Jan–Sep 2017 (%)

Supermarket trade*

5 991.4

+3.3%

Service station store and fuel sales

1 299.1

+5.4%

Travel industry and hospitality business*

598.7

+0.1%

Department stores and speciality stores

201.9

-4.6%

Other

458.1

-7.9%

S-Group total

8 549.2

+2.5%

* The figure includes sales in Russia and Estonia. The supermarket sales figures for 2017 also include the operations in Latvia and Lithuania.