Online supermarket Picnic gets €355 million capital injection from shareholders

Picnic has received a capital injection of 355 million euros from its shareholders, mainly to finance further expansion in Germany and France. The online supermarket did not say how much the company is worth after the capital round, nor what interest the investors have acquired in Picnic in the new investment round, the Financieele Dagblad reported.

The online supermarket launched in the German region of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2018 and expanded to cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Stuttgart last year. “In Germany, less than 10 percent of the population can order from us. That should be closer to 50 percent in the coming years,” co-founder Michiel Muller told FD.

In France, Picnic launched in the region around the city of Lille in 2021 and expanded to the Paris area last year. Less than 5 percent of French people can currently order from Picnic. The company plans to use the money raised in the investment round to build distribution centers and hubs, buy new delivery vehicles, and hire more staff in both countries.

Picnic was founded in Amersfoort in 2015 and quickly expanded through the Netherlands. According to the company, about 80 percent of Netherlands residents can order from the online supermarket. Muller doesn’t expect to expand further in the Netherlands because delivering profitably in very remote areas is impossible.

Last year, Picnic’s turnover increased by almost 40 percent to 1.25 billion euros, Muller told FD. “This means we are growing five times as fast as the market. The company’s profitability “relatively” improved compared to 2022, when the company suffered a loss of almost 209 million euros, Muller said.

According to Muller, Picnic is profitable in “mature markets” - areas where the company has been active for over two years, runs serious volumes, and has set up robotized distribution centers. The company expects to achieve black figures in other areas using the same combination of scale, automation, and efficiency. Picnic delivery vehicles drive a fixed circle instead of crisscrossing through a city, for example. The company will publish its annual figures later this year.

Picnic’s previous investment round was in September 2021. Then the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation came on board and the shareholders together paid 600 million euros.