The early years
The Danish Supermarket was built on the foundation of the Salling department store, created in 1906 by Ferdinand Salling. He worked there until his death in 1953 and he managed to transform his company into public limited company - F. Salling A/S.
After the death of Ferdinand Salling, his son Herman Salling took over the company. He travelled all over the world in search for inspiration and new ideas. After that he decided to focus on department stores, supermarkets and hypermarket chains.
In 1960, Herman Salling opened his first supermarket store Føtex, through his company Jysk Supermarket, which was a completely new type of store for Denmark. The idea behind that store was to provide both food and textiles under one roof.[3]
A.P. Møller enters Dansk Supermarked
Herman Salling wanted to expand his venture across Europe, so he started looking for partners to provide him extra funding.
Salling found the right partner in 1964 and he made a deal with Arnold Peter Møller, which acquired 50% of the company off him. Møller also suggested that Herman Salling's company - Jysk Supermarket, should change its name to Danish Supermarket A/S.
The birth of Bilka
In 1970, Danish Supermarked gave the Danes the first discount store in Denmark - Bilka. The first store was located in Tilst, near Aarhus. After the opening of the store, there were more than 50,000 people visiting it every day. At this point, the customers were becoming more and more price conscious. Some of them even had extra freezers at their homes, so that they could buy more goods at the discount store. The idea for the creation of Bilka came from Herman Salling's visit to West Germany. After that he managed to convince his partner, the shipping magnate Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, that hypermarkets were the way forward.[4]
The launch of Netto
In 1981, the first store of the discount supermarket chain Netto was opened in Denmark. The company later expanded into Germany, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Netto is the only company part of Salling Group to have expanded outside Denmark.
The German Netto stores, set up in 1990, were originally a 75:25 joint venture between Dansk Supermarked and the largest German supermarket chain, Edeka. Dansk Supermarked acquired Edeka's 25% stake in January 2013, enabling it to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Dansk Supermarked. Edeka also owns a separate discount supermarket chain, Netto Marken-Discount, which is completely unrelated to Dansk Supermarked.
The United Kingdom Netto stores, also set up in 1990, were later sold to the British supermarket chain Asda, (owned by the United States retailer Walmart), in 2010. However, in 2014, Dansk Supermarked relaunched Netto UK stores as a 50:50 joint venture with another British supermarket chain, J Sainsbury plc. In 2016 J Sainsbury plc
Expansion into other ventures
Tøj & Sko, a clothing and footwear retailer, was also founded in 1981. The stores were closed in 2012.
Dansk Supermarked also launched in 1987 another non-food retailer A-Z. However, by 2014, these A-Z stores had been rebranded to Bilka.
Mærsk sells its stake back to Salling
As of January 2014, the company was 81% owned by F. Salling Invest A/S and F. Salling Holding A/S (known as the Salling Companies) and 19% owned by A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. On 7 January 2014, A.P. Møller - Mærsk A/S announced that it was selling a 48.68% stake in Dansk Supermarked back to F. Salling Invest A/S and F. Salling Holding A/S (jointly the "Salling Companies"), with an option to buy back the remaining 19% stake in 2019. The remaining stake was bought earlier than expected at the end of 2017.[6][7]
Relaunch of BR toy store chain
On January 17, 2019, Salling Group announced the acquisition of some parts of Top-Toy, the bankrupt company behind the toy chains BR and Toys "R" Us in Denmark.[8] The agreement included Top-Toy's entire Danish inventory and the rights to the BR name and brands for a future 25 new stores. Salling Group's CEO, Per Bank, called the deal a "strategically important agreement" that would ensure that Danes could still buy toys in physical stores across the country. However, no decision was made regarding the long-term future of the BR brand. The acquisition did not include Top-Toy's stores or employees, but Salling Group did have 1,500 open positions. Of those, approximately 1,000 were in Denmark, and 60% of those were aimed at young people under 18 or were student positions.[9]
Purchase of Rimi Baltic
Swedish group ICA Gruppen and Salling Group have agreed on a sale price of retailer Rimi Baltic of 1.3 billion euros, excluding debts, company representatives told the media on March 5, 2025.[10][11][12] The European Commission approved the deal on 5 May 2025, with transfer expected to be completed by June 2025.[13] Transaction completed in June 2, 2025.[14]
