The investment in Acqua & Sapone was the result of our long-term tracking of and significant investment experience in the European value retail space. We believe the discount and value sub-segment of the wider retail market represents as an attractive niche benefitting from resilience through economic cycles and less susceptibility to disruption from the growth in online retail.
We identified A&S as an attractive investment opportunity operating in a resilient and growing market with Non-Food Value specialist retailers consistently growing channel market share within the HPC segment. Historically A&S had operated as a collection of independent family-owned companies with the current business being created in 2021 when the vendors combined five Acqua & Sapone regional entities into one business. We saw the opportunity to work with a strong existing management team to deliver further growth in the business in part through the application of our data science capabilities and further store roll-out.
