Green groceries at KIWI

OSLO - Two years ago the largest Norwegian retailer NorgesGruppen and her discount banner KIWI organised an architectural competition. The winning supermarket design was meant for a new kind of grocery chain: ‘Green Waves’. KIWI has the intention to open five of such stores all over Norway.  

Green Waves is a new concept that will be greener than the current KIWI stores. Environmentally friendly building materials will reduce the CO2 footprint with 60% compared with standard building. Besides this, the energy savings will be up to 50% and higher. The greenest store of Norway will be located in Hokksund (about 50 km southwest of Oslo), the place where it all started about 40 years ago. Since then, the KIWI chain has developed towards a successful nationwide player with 650 stores and a revenue of more than 30 billion Norwegian Kroner (about 3 billion Euro). 

What can we expect from these developments and what will the design look like? Well, the published picture does show something, think about a waved roof covered with grass, a field of flowers and beehives. ‘Environmental sustainability and architecture can go hand in hand’ says Ton Kirkeng, KIWI’s founder. We will see it all at March 15 2019 when the opening is planned, exactly on KIWI’s 40^th anniversary.  

Yearly, TEN visits many different markets, also in Scandinavia. Earlier this year we visited the KIWI stores and other major supermarkets in Norway to see if there are opportunities for our principals. Besides this, we had meetings for our principals at the head office of NorgesGruppen. Are you interested in our destinations and activities to see what we can do for you? Please contact us for a first meeting without any obligations: http://www.theexportnetwork.nl/contact/.

TEN the export network advises and supports food companies that are aiming to broaden their horizons. We coordinate food export activities, encourage business development projects, and create new international links. We also help improve the standard of existing export activities, and we operate as SIB advisor to SMEs. For more information www.theexportnetwork.nl.

Source: Norwegian inflight magazine July 2017