Online supermarket Picnic made a profit in the Netherlands for the first time last year, 10 years after its launch, according to annual figures published on Monday and reported by the Financieele Dagblad.
The Dutch arm booked an underlying operating profit of €4 million, but heavy spending on new distribution centres in Germany pushed the group as a whole to a net loss of €272 million, slightly more than the year before.
The number of customers across the Netherlands, Germany and France grew by 700,000 to 3.6 million.
Picnic, which delivers in three-quarters of the Netherlands, is still in dispute with unions FNV and CNV over which collective labour agreement should cover its delivery workers. It lost a court case last year over unpaid evening and weekend supplements and is negotiating a settlement while appealing to the Supreme Court.
