Norway is well-known for leading the field in terms of environmental conservation and sustainability. The country also takes a proactive role in steering companies toward acting in a greener and environmentally friendly manner, especially within the retail marketplace. A recent standout is SPAR Norway. Its new store in an Oslo suburb is Norway’s newest example of international best practice in innovative, eco-friendly solutions in retail.

SPAR Snarøya features green initiatives that have reduced the store’s CO₂ emissions by almost 60% since opening in August 2018—equivalent to producing about 10 million plastic bags in CO₂ terms. SPAR Norway is part of the NorgesGruppen, Norway’s largest food retailer with a 43% market share. Still privately held, NorgesGruppen operates 1,800 grocery stores under several brands, including SPAR and EuroSPAR. It is the fifth-largest company in Norway, reporting revenue of 9 billion euros ($10.1 billion) in 2018.

Sustainable and Climate Neutral

NorgesGruppen’s investment in eco-friendly stores like SPAR Snarøya is part of the group’s wider ambition to create a sustainable and climate-neutral supply chain. According to Ole Fjeldheim, CEO of SPAR Norway, the journey spans the entire operation and includes installing solar panels on the roofs of 13 warehouses operated by ASKO, Norway’s largest grocery wholesaler and part of NorgesGruppen. Today, 90,000 square meters (107,639 square yards) of solar panels ensure the business is self-sufficient with energy across all its warehouse sites. Wind turbines are another recent investment—ASKO introduced five at warehouse sites in 2018.

In transportation, ASKO’s most recent adventure features two self-driving, fully electric roll-on, roll-off vehicle ferries slated to run across the Oslo Fjord in 2024. If realized, the ferries will help to reduce an estimated 5,500 tons of CO₂ and cut truck trips on the road by two million kilometers. Enova, a public organization managing the Norwegian Energy Fund, has backed the project with 119 million kroner ($13.9 million).

Employees are trained in food waste via a simulation game, which puts staff within ‘virtual stores’ to collect points if they reduce food waste.

NorgesGruppen also is the first company in Norway to invest in Tesla electric trucks, with 10 on order and anticipated to be delivering to SPAR stores, including the branch in Snarøya, and other NorgesGruppen retail chains in 2021. In addition, the business is investing in hydrogen trucks—smaller vehicles ideal for city-center deliveries—and the group aims to have all of its 600-strong truck fleet either electric or hydrogen by 2026. Hydrogen trucks will be deployed in areas that lack the infrastructure for EVS.

“We are on a green journey,” said Fjeldheim. “We are motivated to invest on the retail side because of the warehouse innovations—everyone is challenging everyone in the company.”

Flourishing Retailer

SPAR Norway increased its market share from 6.7% in 2013 to 7.2% in 2018 and is the only supermarket in Norway to have enjoyed growth in that period, Fjeldheim reported. The business has achieved a compound annual growth rate of 3.7% in the past five years, with sales rising from €1.06 billion in 2013 to €1.26 billion in 2018. The performance is especially impressive set against overall market growth of just 1.1% in 2017 and 2.5% in 2018, and the fact that Norway, with a population of 5.3 million and 3,900 grocery stores, has the highest number of shops per capita.

With 264 SPAR stores and 29 larger EuroSPAR sites, the retailer added five stores in 2018 and began accepting online grocery orders at 11 stores (e-commerce accounts for 3.3% of total sales in the stores that have online sales). It will open 12 stores in 2019. SPAR Norway’s workforce numbers 7,000 employees.

The Flagship Store

SPAR Snarøya is located in an affluent residential Oslo suburb, close to both the capital city and the sea and near the former site of Norway’s main airport where businesses, including Equinor (formerly Statoil), are rapidly expanding operations.

“SPAR Snarøya is the most environmentally friendly store in the Nordics,” said Fjeldheim. “It’s a flagship and demonstrates that we are investing for the future.”

This modern SPAR Snarøya store is constructed out of solid wood, with the floors and foundations made from low-carbon concrete. The windows are triple-glazed to reduce the CO₂ footprint and to maintain an ambient in-store temperature. The exterior is clad in 90 square meters of solar panels, which power all of the environmentally friendly LED lighting inside the store. In addition to overhead lighting, shelving displays for products including bottled soft drinks and confectionery are backlit by LED lights to stunning effect. The bright design has driven sales and is now a feature in all new SPAR stores. Elsewhere inside, excess heat from the refrigerators and freezers helps to heat the store.

Outside, the roof is covered in grass to capture CO₂. The environmentally friendly asphalt parking lot includes space for 55 vehicles and features four charging points for both electric cars—30% of all new cars sold in Norway in 2018 were electric and the country is targeting all electric by 2025—and electric bicycles. “So many new cars are electric, and this is convenient for customers to charge their cars while they are shopping,” Fjeldheim said.

We are on a green journey … Everyone is challenging everyone in the company.

Food Waste

Reducing food waste also is high on SPAR Norway’s agenda and visible at the Snarøya store. The retailer has introduced smaller loaves, for example, to cater to small households as half of Oslo’s population lives by themselves.

What’s more, one hour before closing time, the store halves the price of all fresh bread. This tactic alone has saved a wasted 500,000 units of bread per year for SPAR Norway. The price cuts are now in practice within the fresh-foods department two hours before closing.

SPAR Norway retailers, including SPAR Snarøya, also are implementing NorgesGruppen’s NGFLYT tool for automatic orders and operations support. It helps stores to place the right orders and reduce food waste. According to Fjeldheim, a new function is being piloted to alert stores when a product is approaching its expiration date, so retailers can reduce the price or take it off the shelves.

Combined, these initiatives have helped SPAR Norway reduce food waste by 25% between 2015 and 2017, but the goal is to continue to chip away at wastage. To assist in the process, all of SPAR Norway’s employees are trained in food wastage via a simulation game, which puts staff within “virtual stores” with various scenarios and an opportunity to collect points if they reduce food waste. Fjeldheim said SPAR International has adopted this technology as a best practice and has extended it to other training modules, including customer service, basic operations and the checkout zone.

Healthy Lifestyles

From a product point of view, SPAR Snarøya enjoys strong sales of eco-lines, which its affluent and health-conscious customer base appreciates. Vegetarianism is gaining ground as in other global markets, with a 36% increase in sales at SPAR Norway from 2017 to 2018.

The consumer appetite for health and well-being meshes with SPAR Norway’s own goals for a healthier lifestyle for Norwegian customers. Fjeldheim said the business has 2020 targets to increase sales of fruit and vegetables, fish and seafood and full-grain bread and similar targets to decrease levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats in diets. “We are changing our recipes and our own brand recipes, and we report on what we have achieved—whether we are on target or better, not on target but moving in the right direction or not on target at all,” he said. As a result, the business now sells more light or diet sodas than regular products, he revealed.

Environmental Funds

The store includes a post office and has introduced self-checkouts alongside manned registers. “It’s brand new in Norway, and our customers are just getting used to it,” Fjeldheim explained.

Consumers can buy reusable shopping bags at the checkout, along with paper carrier bags printed with the SPAR logo (20 Euro cents) and plastic bags (17 Euro cents), while bags for recycling food waste at home are free of charge. NorgesGruppen also contributes to the Norwegian Retailers’ Environmental Fund, which collates charges made for plastic bags—half of one krone for every bag sold—and then uses the proceeds to fund environmental projects.

There also are in-store units for recycling plastic bottles and carrier bags with an option to donate the incentive received to the Red Cross. SPAR Norway has raised €1 million for the humanitarian organization to date, with half of the sum given to local branches of the Red Cross.

Another NorgesGruppen-wide initiative is an environmental fund—€800,000 a year—for employees who seek funding for personal environmentally friendly projects to help decrease energy and CO₂ emissions—be that purchasing an electric car, electric bike or push bike, or implementing energy efficiency measures within their own homes or prioritizing public transportation.

There’s no stopping SPAR Norway it seems. Fjeldheim reported that the company has invested €150 million in the business since 2013 and that all stores were “reinvented” by the end of 2018. SPAR Snarøya is the current flagship, but convenience retailers looking for sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions and inspiration should keep a very close eye on SPAR Norway and its NorgesGruppen parent.