Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn has appointed two new directors. Deliveroo's Philip Padberg will head the chain's Dutch web shop, while Blokker's Rob Heesen takes control of convenience chain AH to go.

The "gilets jaunes" (yellow vests) demonstrations have hit French hypermarkets with a 15 to 25 % turnover loss, retailers see their turnover fall by up to 40 %. E-commerce in turn gets a boost.

Europe's biggest electronics retailer MediaMarktSaturn has installed a self-checkout in its flagship store in Hamburg. Customers can now shop without passing by a cash register, if they so choose.

Carrefour Belgium has decided to pull the plug on its proximity store chain Easy. Most stores will transfer to the Express concept, saving the French retailer the burden of one extra store profile to maintain.

Belgian-Dutch retail group Ahold Delhaize will have to focus more on robotics and artificial intelligence, in order to stay ahead of Amazon, CEO Frans Muller says. He therefore wants to cooperate closely with technology companies.

Spanish department store chain El Corte Inglés has entered into a cooperation agreement with Chinese online giant Alibaba. The partnership covers e-commerce, physical retail, cloud services and payment systems.

Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt is introducing night shifts in its stores early next tear, in order to prepare orders for its click and collect service Collect & Go. The management hopes to get the unions' agreement as soon as possible.

French distributor Carrefour will be testing its own registerless store concept next year. Just like pioneer Amazon Go, Carrefour will rely on cameras and facial recognition to achieve a fully automated checkout system.

For the first time, German e-tailer Zalando has departed from its renowned 'free' policy: in Italy, the company has started charging a delivery fee for small orders. A sign of things to come?

Online retailers can no longer deny customers from other EU countries access to their web shops. However, applying different sales prices per country is still allowed, and delivery abroad is not an obligation.

Over 750 retailers have chosen Dutch chain Rituals to be their Retailer of the year 2018 at this year's RetailDetail Night. Other highlights included professor Gino Van Ossel's review of the retail year.

Alan Jope is the new CEO at British-Dutch FMCG giant Unilever. He succeeds Paul Polman, who steps down a bit earlier than expected. It is unlikely that it is a coincidence that the company chooses a British CEO.

Heavy investments in logistics and digitisation have taken quite a bite out of Ikea's profits in the past financial year, as the Swedish furniture chain has decided not to burden its customers with these costs.

Fashion chain Esprit has announced a worldwide restructuring to keep the company competitive. Almost half of the staff will be terminated and many outlets will be closed around the globe.

Belgian sandwich chain Panos has opened its 100th 'City' store in the Walloon city of Namur. It is only the fifth such store in Wallonia, but the chain has expressed its intentions of a rapid expansion in Belgium's southern region.

Danish furniture chain JYSK continues its growth with a turnover of 3.6 billion euros in its financial year 2017-2018. The new record is mostly due to a large number of store openings and the chain's entry into the United Arab Emirates.

Belgian brewery group Duvel Moortgat has acquired a 60% stake in Jarr, a London manufacturer of kombucha, a fermented tea. Financial details have not been released.

Dutch chain Jumbo is preparing its conquest of Belgium in silence, but our editor-in-chief has found out which six towns will be among the first to welcome the yellow supermarket chain, based on permit procedures and other documents.

The announced arrival of Dutch chain Jumbo in Belgium will shake things up quite a bit. Market leader Colruyt will be forced to adopt a more up-market store concept, while Delhaize may be forced to rebrand (some of) its supermarkets to its sister chain Albert Heijn, a new report predicts.

Kingfisher, Europe's second largest group of DIY chains, is leaving Portugal, Russia and Spain. The group wants to focus on its primary markets, including France, where their Castorama chain is struggling.

Black Friday, the American shopping festivity that broke every record last year in Belgium, is successful but also controversial. Major chains may reap the benefits, but smaller retailers are beginning to resist the endless discounts.

Swedish furniture chain Ikea plans to cut 7,500 jobs as part of its transformation plan, which should help the retailer cope with "changing customer behaviour". On the other hand, the chain will create 11,500 jobs in emerging markets.

Both turnover and profits were in decline over the past six months at Dutch spirits manufacturer Lucas Bols. The disappointing results are due to temporary import restrictions in West Africa and fewer gin sales in the Netherlands.

Vegetable producer Greenyard has suffered heavy losses in the first half of the financial year: the listeria contagion in Hungary, the drought and a number of impairments are the primary causes of these poor results.

There is no accounting for taste, says the Court of Justice of the European Union: tastes are too subjective to be protected by law and therefore do not fall under intellectual property law.

Kimberly-Clark has decided not to sell its European division after all. The offer they received for the branch which includes the popular toilet paper brand Scottex was considerably lower than the expected one billion euros.

At the beginning of next year H&M subsidiary Monki plans to open a new concept store in Brussels: after Ghent and Antwerp it will be the Scandinavian chain's third store in Belgium.

An international group of companies is set to test drones at the DronePort campus in Brustem, Belgium. Internet giant Amazon is among its members.

Dutch Hema is feeling the strength of its new owner Marcel Boekhoorn. Four of the current eight directors have to leave the company in the next few months, they will not be replaced.

The Belgian National Lottery's plans to start with its own retail chain are taking shape. The first stores, called Lottery Centers, will open in Antwerp, Ghent and Liège.

Ahold Delhaize is hoping to profit from e-commerce in the near future, but today gaining a larger share of the market is more important, says CEO Frans Muller. In the United States, the Belgo-Dutch group also intends to grow through acquisitions.