Aldi Australia chief executive Tom Daunt is leaving the local discount chain and moving to Salzburg to become the global joint managing director of the German supermarket.
He is the first Australian to take the helm of the global business from Matthew Barnes, who resigned earlier this year to return to the UK.
Staff was told of the news today, with suppliers to be officially informed tomorrow. Mr Daunt takes up his new role on May 1 and the local discount retailer will now be led by Anna McGrath and Marietta Schorn.
Ms McGrath has worked with Mr. Daunt for several years and is a 17-year veteran of discount supermarket, while Ms Schorn will move to Australia from Austria where she had been running the Aldi network.
This is not the first time Aldi has operated a dual management model.
Aldi Australia launched in 2000. By 2014, German-born Stefan Kopp, alongside Mr Daunt – who at that time was group managing director – were both running the local chain.
Mr Kopp left the Australian operations in 2017 and returned to Aldi in Germany, while Mr Daunt remained as the local CEO. He helped the company defy skeptics who had suggested the discount retailer would never find sufficient sites and that its narrow range of private-label brands would not resonate with Australian shoppers.
In the UK, Aldi has been taking market share from the major supermarket chains as living costs rise and real wages fall behind amid heightened inflation.
Analysts expect a similar trend to play out in Australia, with Aldi tipped to regain market share it lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, when consumers sought convenience over price and favored neighborhood stores over shopping centres. Aldi’s share plateaued at between 10 percent and 12 percent before the pandemic.
“Starting in the second half of 2022, we are seeing an incremental rise in the number of customers choosing to shop with us, and our expectation is that will continue this year.”
Mr Daunt has committed to three years in the global role and will likely return to Australia in future. He did not return calls on Wednesday.