January 18, 2021

Arla Foods to push sales in e-commerce five years ahead of schedule

Arla is fast tracking its plans to become a dairy market leader for e-commerce in Europe and aims to double its sales via its customers' online platforms to €600 million (US$725 million) by 2025 across the region.

Having witnessed a rapid growth in its e-commerce sales during the pandemic - with growth doubling in many key markets during 2020 - Arla is now harnessing this development, as locked-down consumers continue to seek out household brands such as Arla and Lurpak during their online shopping.

The farmer-owned cooperative is pushing its existing e-commerce plans three to five years ahead of schedule, increasing investments in its online presence, extending the number of expert e-commerce employees across the sales and marketing organisation in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland.

"We have a clear goal of becoming a dairy market leader for e-commerce in Europe and continuing to be a preferred partner for our customers. E-commerce was on the rise in Europe before the COVID-19 crisis and we had been preparing on the technological side and with our customers for some time," said the executive vice president and CCO for Arla Europe, Peter Giørtz Carlsen.

"The pandemic has rapidly changed behaviors towards online channels and this shift represents an opportunity for us to push our e-commerce ambitions forward in the innovation pipeline and the work is well under way."

Arla's ability to fast track its e-commerce plans is partly due to the success of the transformation and cost-savings programme Calcium, as this has ensured that the cooperative is able to reinvest in the business to boost online sales across Europe, the cooperative said.

Arla's expanded e-commerce acceleration team will focus on data analysis, driving online campaigns and visual content to make it easy for online shopper to find Arla's household products.

With its new e-commerce strategy, the cooperative has set an ambitious goal to have 10% of all retail sales across core European markets come from e-commerce.

At the moment, one of Arla's biggest markets for e-commerce is the United Kingdom, where 17% of  total retail sales come through e-commerce channels.

- Arla