Panda Supermarkets chain was established in 1979 and today is the largest food products retail in Saudi Arabia. Currently the firm has 102 supermarkets and 50 hypermarkets and 88 Pandaty convenience store outlets Kingdom wide. The firm has plans to increase the number of its outlets to 250 by 2020. In 2007, the company entered international operations by opening its first hypermarket in Dubai. Panda is owned by SAVOLA Group, the leading food products producer and retailer in Saudi Arabia with business interests in edible oil, sugar, dairy farm, confectioneries, fast food restaurants and packaging. In 2012, Panda entered into convenience stores business by opening five Pandaty stores which reached 88 outlets in 2014. The firm has an aggressive plan to open 600 Pandatys in Saudi Arabia in the next five years.
With 68 supermarkets, 7 hypermarkets, 11 wholesale outlets and 23 corner stores, Al-Othaim Markets is the second largest food products retail chain in Saudi Arabia. Al-Othaim’s other business include food products imports under own brand names, food production and ownership of shopping malls. Al-Othaim is the second largest retailer after SAVOLA Group’s Panda retail chain. With a customer base of more than 40 million shoppers, its sales volume reaches 4 billion riyals (approx. EUR 1 billion).
Al Sadhan Supermarkets was established in Riyadh in the 1970s. Currently, the firm has 4 hypermarkets and 4 supermarkets in Riyadh. The firm has plans to increase the number of its retail outlets to 18 in the next ten years.
Carrefour Hypermarkets (Saudi Hypermarkets CO) was established in Riyadh in 2004 as a joint-venture between Al-Olayan Group (Saudi company) and the Majid Al-Futtaim Group (U.A.E. company). Currently, the company has 14 hypermarkets in three main Saudi cities. Carrefour has plans to increase the number of its Saudi outlets to 20 in the next few years. Carrefour also has several branches in UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria; and it is the largest chain of retail stores in the world, it hosts more than 107 million customers every year worldwide.
