Krakowski Kredens to develop at airports

2010-07-18

Alma Market, the operator of the Alma delicatessen chain, and Krakowski Kredens (KK), a purveyor of traditional Polish foodstuffs, are planning to expand KK’s presence at Polish airports.
After posting strong financial results for the first half of H1 2010, the group’s management is looking to gain new customers, and is therefore planning to establish more Krakowski Kredens stores in the airports’ duty-free zones. At the moment the company is in the process of looking for some new locations. However, as Retail Update Poland has learned, no new openings at Polish airports are envisaged for 2010. So far there is only one store of Krakowski Kredens located in Balice Airport, and a stand with the chain’s products at Okecie Airport in Warsaw.
Keraniss, another company from the same market segment, which currently operates two stores at Okecie Airport and one each in Lodz and Katowice, is also looking for new locations at airports for its stores.

As the economy recovers from the downturn and as the country prepares to host the Euro 2012 football championships, air passenger traffic in Poland is set to increase in the years ahead. Polish retailers are positioning themselves to take advantage of this growth by opening airport duty-free stores.
After a weak 2009, when passenger traffic declined by more than 8% compared with the year before, activity picked up substantially in the first months of 2010. According to data from the Civil Aviation Authority (UCL), in Q1 Polish airports handled approx. 3.9 million passengers, an increase of 4.8% from the same period a year ago.
Furthermore, a number of airport construction and expansion projects have got underway in the country ahead of the Euro 2012. For example, Wroclaw’s airport is building a new terminal, and the Gdansk airport will be expanded by the end of 2013. Also, a new airport will be built in Modlin near Warsaw to absorb some of the traffic from the capital’s F. Chopin airport. All of these investments will no doubt create more duty-free retail space.
It is no wonder then that retailers decided to turn to airports in their search for new customers. The prospects are best for stores with alcohol and cigarettes (these items being relatively cheap in Poland especially in comparison with other EU countries) and shops offering traditional Polish products, which are always highly popular with foreign tourists. These two categories of stores are already doing well in airport locations.

Paulina Burzawa
Business Editor
PMR Publications