The turnover of retail establishments grew 5.2% in 2024 to 26.0 billion euros, with the number of establishments rising 2.9% to 3,800, INE announced this Friday, 28th.
In trade statistics relating to commercial units of relevant size for 2024, released today by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the turnover of these establishments totaled 26.0 billion euros and the sales volume 25.8 billion euros, both with year-on-year increases of 5.2%.
In 2024, the establishments under analysis employed 130.5 thousand workers (3.8% more than in 2023).
In the year under review, the number of transactions rose 5.8%, with 1.2 billion transactions being carried out.
Of the total business volume, that of food retail units represented 70.7%, or 18.4 billion euros, a year-on-year growth of 4.8% (down from 14.0% a year earlier).
In 2024, 48.5% of commercial units of relevant size carried out food retail trade and employed 67.0% of workers, with variations of 0.2 and -1.0 percentage points, respectively.
Food retail units represented 81.9% of total transactions in 2024 and had a display and sales area of 2.3 million square meters (an increase of 2.4%) and 87.4 thousand workers.
In these units, the relative importance of women grew by 6.3 percentage points, which represented, in 2024, 74.7% of the staff working in food retail units, with 73.1% of the total being full-time and 26.9% part-time.
In food retail, the other food products category, which includes rice, pasta and cereals, among others, generated the highest revenue, representing 13.9%, followed by meat and meat products (12.9%) and fruits and vegetables (11.9%).
According to data collected by INE, the sale of private label products – sold by all establishments analyzed – represented 47.0% of global food retail sales, growing 1.8 percentage points to 8.6 billion euros (+8.9%).
The turnover of non-food retail establishments rose 6.2% to 7.6 billion euros, distributed across 213.2 million transactions (5.5% more).
This segment had 1,958 units (48 more than in 2023) and 43.1 thousand workers (7.2% more).
Also in this segment, the percentage of full-time workers (62.7%) was higher than that of part-time workers (37.3%), with women remaining the majority of the workforce (65.3%).
The main products sold in non-food retail establishments were clothing and accessories (23.8%), computers, telecommunications and optical and photographic material (12.6%), furniture, lighting and textiles (11.7%), household appliances (10.3%) and construction materials (8.8%).
In analyzing the representation of private labels, INE pointed out that 91.4% of non-food retail establishments sold private label products, which represented 44.5% of global sales – the equivalent of 3.3 billion euros.
A commercial unit of relevant size corresponds to a commercial establishment (considered individually or within the scope of several establishments belonging to the same company) with a continuous or accumulated sales area equal to or greater than 2 thousand or 15 thousand square meters, respectively, in the case of food retail; sales area exceeding 4 thousand square meters (continuous) or 25 thousand square meters (accumulated) in non-food retail; and continuous or accumulated sales area exceeding 5 thousand or 30 thousand square meters, respectively, in wholesale trade.