Holland & Barrett eyes foreign stores for healthy sales

HOLLAND & BARRETT is targeting sales of £2billion under its new ownership and is eyeing up foreign acquisitions to fuel its ambitious growth plans.

The health food chain was bought by L1 Retail, a retail investment fund controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, for £1.74billion last year.

Peter Aldis, who has been chief executive of Holland & Barrett for close on 10 years, said the board is organising a strategy with its new owners.

“When we come up with a strategy and the plans, which we’re working on, the sort of broad goal is that we’d like to see a trebling of the business, with £2billion worth of revenue, in a 10-year window,” he said.

“So they are pushing hard, like most good owners do, to do the right thing, and the beauty about that is they are willing to invest money to achieve it.”

To expand internationally, Mr Aldis expects Holland & Barrett will acquire some businesses, but the retailer will continue to grow organically in the UK.

“Internationally, we ultimately see the business being bigger outside the UK than within the UK and that is not the case today,” he said.

“So we have small businesses in China, in the Middle East, and we want to make sure we are creating plans to enable them to grow.”

He said that opening bricks and mortar stores could be a challenge in some countries, but that in those cases the brand could be introduced online instead.