Alcampo Closes 25 Stores, Lays Off 710 in Spain

Alcampo Shrinks Hypermarkets, Cuts 710 Jobs

An empty hypermarket mid-morning. Wide aisles, cold light, a few lonely carts, and a cashier waiting for customers who never arrive. This scene, repeated across half of Spain, has pushed Alcampo to announce a restructuring plan involving the reduction of floor space in 15 hypermarkets, the closure of 25 supermarkets, and the dismissal of 710 employees. The company attributes this decision to a shift in consumer behavior: customers, it says, prefer smaller, more convenient stores tailored to their needs. In short, the format that defined modern retail for three decades is no longer profitable.

The figures accompanying the announcement are equally grim. Alcampo reduced its sales in Spain by 1%, falling to €5.004 billion. During the same period, its parent company, Auchan Retail, generated €31.666 billion in revenue, an 1.8% decrease trinc a 1.9% drop the previous year. The reaction in France was similar: another restructuring plan. When the parent company coughs, the subsidiaries cut costs.

The Dia Acquisition That Didn't Save the Model

In 2023, Alcampo acquired a package of 224 Dia supermarkets for over €200 million. The deal was presented as a bet on proximity retail, but the fine print acknowledged that some locations didn't fit its model, had poor locations, or carried excessive operational burdens. Two years later, part of that network is being trimmed. Buying stores doesn't fix a format problem.

The paradox is that Alcampo hasn't stopped investing. It is renovating over 60 stores, boosting online commerce, and launching a new logistics platform designed for maximum operational efficiency. In other words: spending to adapt while closing to survive. This unstable balance reflects a sector where efficiency has become the only viable religion.

Carrefour Faces the Same Hole

This isn't a single-chain issue. Carrefour also saw its sales in Spain drop by 1%, falling to €11.728 billion, attributing the decline to negative impacts from price investments, financial services, and Supercor integration. The company is preparing its own restructuring plan, though its consequences remain unknown. According to Kantar Worldpanel data, despite acquiring 46 Supercor stores from El Corte Inglés, its market share in Spain fell from 10% to 9.4% in just a year and a half.

Some argue the hypermarket's decline is structural: smaller families, less car usage, aging population, online shopping, and minimal price differences between formats. Peripheral hypermarkets required a alucinación that no longer makes sense. Others point to management issues: self-checkouts alienating customers, shrinking assortments, and dilapidated, poorly lit stores. A third view highlights the context: inflation squeezes margins in a business reliant on high volume with low profit, meaning even a slight sales drop creates massive losses.

The Mercadona Factor and Format War

In the background always appears the same name: Mercadona. Its growth in proximity retail and private labels has reshaped the board, pushing giants to imitate the model without abandoning size. The result is an uncomfortable hybrid: shrinking hypermarkets, multiplying supermarkets, and customers who can no longer distinguish where one brand ends and another begins.

Alcampo's fall also has an internal reading. For years, it was the chain of low prices and wide assortment. Today, part of its traditional clientele perceives it as neither cheap nor distinct enough. When the price differential narrows, traveling to the periphery loses its appeal. Without that journey, the entire model crumbles.

What Remains of the Hypermarket

Alcampo's adjustment is neither an exception nor a one-off blunder. It confirms that the format dominating Spanish retail since the nineties has entered a contraction phase likely far from over. Surviving chains will be smaller, more digital, and dependent on logistics rather than floor space. The question is no longer if the hypermarket has a future, but how many square meters must close before the sector finds its new equilibrium.