Un in six supermarkets (16.2%) in Belgium are structurally in difficulty, according to a survey of the sector carried out by the specialist magazine Gondola and the data specialist GraydonCreditsafe, writing on Saturday The last news. In concrete terms, 576 stores are concerned.
“Bankruptcy threatens them sooner or later,” says Eric Van Den Broele of GraydonCreditsafe. But many other Belgian supermarkets are also likely to face difficulties because one in two stores has too few reserves to cope with unexpected shocks.
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The supermarket sector scores significantly lower than the average for Belgian companies. “Two scenarios are possible: either we will have a lot of bankruptcies in the near future, or there will be even more takeovers and there will only be big players left who absorb all the small ones”, predicts Eric Van Den Broele.