September has been particularly busy for supermarkets.

Early in the month, ARD Discount, a popular Italian discount store, opened its first Maltese outlet in Mellieħa, just 100 metres up the road from the town’s Welbee’s supermarket.

A day earlier, the Planning Authority had given its go-ahead for a new Lidl outlet in Qormi, on the site of former General Soft Drinks Factory, nestled between its existing Qormi outlet and the soon-to-be-opened Lidl on the former Cortis site in Żebbuġ.

Meanwhile, Lidl’s plans to expand even further hit a stumbling block when the competition regulator blocked the Italian giant’s plans to buy Scotts supermarket in Żabbar, saying that it would become too dominant in the south.

In the midst of this, the Malta Chamber questioned whether Malta needs more supermarkets, suggesting that we may have reached saturation point.

How many groceries do we need?

With the country’s population continuing to grow, and spikes in food inflation in recent years, it is no surprise to find that people in Malta spent more on food last year than at any other point in recent history.

Maltese households spent €1.2 billion on food shopping in 2023, rising to over €1.5b if we include cigarettes and alcohol. This means that each person in Malta spent a little over €2,000 on groceries throughout the year, together with another €600 on tobacco and alcohol. Not to mention the money spent on other products typically sold at supermarkets, from toiletries to household goods, pet food and garden equipment.

This is set to rise even further this year, if trends during the first half of the year are anything to go by, with expenditure during the first six months of 2024 above that of the same period the previous year.

People spend over a tenth of their income on grocery shopping, with only housing (including electricity bills) and restaurants and hotel stays proving more costly.

So, in theory, the introduction of more competition across the supermarket sector is welcome, potentially driving grocery prices down and leaving people with more money in their pockets.

How many supermarkets does Malta have?

It’s hard to tell for sure.

A 2020 exercise by Malta’s competition regulator, MCCAA, found there were around 400 grocery shops across Malta and Gozo, from large chain supermarkets to small corner shops.

This is likely to have increased slightly over the past four years, as new retailers moved into Malta and existing operators looked to expand their business, but it is unclear how much of this has been at the expense of more traditional grocery shops.

Industry sources told Times of Malta there are roughly 50 supermarkets across Malta and Gozo, although these include a handful of smaller outlets run by the larger supermarket retailers, such as Greens and Scotts, who are dipping their toes into the corner shop market.

Lidl and Welbee's lead the way, with their 10 supermarkets apiece, with several other household names such as Arkadia, Ta' Dirjanu and Chain Supermarket all having multiple outlets.

Unsurprisingly, many of the supermarkets are located in Malta’s most densely populated urban centres, often just a stone’s throw away from one another. Relatively fewer larger supermarkets have opened in the country’s more sparsely populated western towns.

What about smaller grocery shops?

Industry sources estimate there are roughly 192 small or medium-sized grocery shops run by chain outlets such as Maypole and Miracle Foods although some of them, such as those run by Dave’s, straddle the line between a large corner shop and a smaller supermarket.

The difference between the two isn’t always clear. The rule of thumb used by the competition regulator is that a shop under 200 square metres in size is typically considered a grocery shop, not a supermarket, but this is not a hard and fast rule across the industry.

Almost half of these small or medium-sized shops are run by Convenience Shop, with the brand’s 95 outlets now a ubiquitous sight across Malta’s towns and villages.

The Convenience Shop is the most popular small or medium-sized grocery shop in Malta. File photo.

Industry sources say that while Convenience Shop is looking to open more outlets, many of its competitors in the corner shop market have similar plans. Maypole are looking to add to their 29 outlets, as are Dave’s and Spar.

In addition to these 192 outlets, there are dozens of other independent or family-run corner shops dotted around the island, together with butchers, vegetable hawkers and fishmongers.  

While traditional vegetable hawkers still operate, they are increasingly under threat. File photo: Chris Sant Fournier

How many supermarkets is too many?

Data compiled by the Food Systems Dashboard, which brings together indicators that track food and nutrition systems across the world, suggests that Malta had around 13 supermarkets for every 100,000 people in 2021, rising to 52 if we also include smaller grocery retailers.

These figures place Malta it in the upper echelons of the list, certainly above countries in the developing world where supermarkets are few and far between, but also above some Nordic countries such as Finland and Denmark, not to mention Ireland, the US and France.

But Malta actually trailed most other EU countries, including Greece (the world capital of supermarkets, with almost 47 for every 100,000 people), Spain, Germany and countless others.

According to the database, Malta also had far fewer supermarkets per capita than fellow European minnows Luxembourg, Cyprus and Iceland (all at around 22), not to mention Liechtenstein, Monaco and Gibraltar.

Curiously, the database suggests that although Malta’s supermarket scene may be flourishing, it was still being outpaced by the growing number of people in the country, meaning there were slightly fewer supermarkets and grocery stores per 100,000 people in 2021 than there were five years earlier.