Saastumarket heads Estonian food retail market

According to AC Nielsen market research the retailer was said to have a leading market share of 12 per cent - a figure that clearly indicates that the market remains fragmented. In most of the more developed retail markets in western Europe the market leaders have in excess of a 20 per cent market share. In the UK, for example, market leader Tesco has a 27 per cent share of UK supermarket sales.

Saastumarket was followed by A-Selver which managed to carve out a 5.3 per cent share of the market, with the Citymarket coming in third with a 4.7 cut. No other food retailer managed to break the four per cent barrier.

This meant that the top three players only managed to muster a 22 per cent slice of the market, indicating that the majority of food purchases are still made up from smaller grocery stores and markets.

Nielsen's survey undoubtedly indicates that despite the high level of economic development in the Baltic state, the supermarket sector has remained relatively undeveloped. This suggests that the market could well be ripe for investments and that the likelyhood of foreign investors - likely to be Finnish or Swedish retailers - making a move on the market now looks increasingly high.

The survey was carried out by AC Nielsen in October and covered all chains whose share of the market was bigger than one per cent. According to Nielsen the total market share for this sector of the food retail market amounted to 41 per cent.