Jerónimo Martins, Portugal’s largest retailer and one of Europe’s biggest food distribution groups, closed the first half of 2026 with sales up 5.1 percent to €18.3 billion — roughly €101 million of revenue every day — and EBITDA up 7.6 percent to €1.24 billion, lifting the margin 16 basis points to 6.8 percent. Net profit came in at €260 million, down 3.5 percent year-on-year, as the group absorbed one of the most deflationary food-retail environments Poland has seen in years.

The engine held. Biedronka, the Polish discount chain that generates the bulk of group revenue, grew sales 1.7 percent to €12.6 billion despite significant basket deflation, with volume growth of around 5 percent preserving market share. Ara in Colombia surged 30.2 percent in euros (21.1 percent in local currency) to €2 billion, with like-for-like sales accelerating to 7.5 percent in the second quarter. At home, Pingo Doce added 5.3 percent to €2.7 billion on strong volumes in a low-inflation market. Management’s guidance stayed sober: challenging conditions are expected to persist, with no material improvement anticipated in the second half.

The Norwegian line item

For corridor readers, the more interesting story sits far from the Polish checkout lanes — at Kvalnes, on the Arctic island of Andøya in Norway’s Vesterålen archipelago. Through its agribusiness arm Jerónimo Martins Agro-Alimentar, the group has spent four years building a position in Andfjord Salmon, the Oslo-listed land-based salmon farmer — and 2026 has seen that position deepen again.

The sequence is worth restating. Jerónimo Martins entered in June 2022 with a NOK 173.9 million (€16.8 million) investment for 10.1 percent of the company. It lifted the holding to 25.1 percent in May 2024 with a further NOK 87 million, then to 28 percent that September with a NOK 60 million share purchase. In April this year, when Andfjord raised NOK 385 million in an oversubscribed private placement at NOK 27.50 per share to fund the build-out of Kvalnes towards 17,000 tonnes of capacity, Jerónimo Martins Agro-Alimentar was allocated 5.5 million of the 14 million new shares — over a third of the raise — and even provided the share-lending facility that let the placement settle quickly. It remains the company’s largest shareholder, with a stake near 30 percent and a seat at the board table through António Serrano.

A salmon farm hitting its marks

The asset is delivering operationally. In late June, Andfjord completed its first-ever post-smolt sale, transferring roughly 450,000 salmon averaging 1,234 grams — about 560 tonnes — to regional farmer Eidsfjord Sjøfarm under a strategic partnership. Standing biomass at Kvalnes stood at 1,315 tonnes at the end of June, with an aggregated survival rate of 98.5 percent — exceptional by industry standards — and harvesting of the first human-grade salmon from pool K1 is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

The logic for a food retailer is straightforward: salmon is a strategic protein for European grocery shelves, and a structural stake in low-carbon, land-adjacent Norwegian production gives the group upstream visibility no Iberian competitor has. For the corridor, it is simply the largest Portuguese capital commitment in Nordic aquaculture — made not by a fund, but by the country’s biggest retailer.

Why this matters for the corridor

Portuguese capital flowing north is the underreported half of the Portugal–Scandinavia relationship, and Jerónimo Martins is its heavyweight case study: a Lisbon-listed group applying food-retail cash flows to a patient, escalating position in Norwegian blue economy infrastructure. Each results season adds another data point — and each Andfjord milestone, from post-smolt sales to the Q4 harvest, now carries a Portuguese shareholder register behind it. The group’s corridor footprint is tracked in our Jerónimo Martins company profile.

What to watch next

Three markers for the second half: Andfjord’s first human-grade harvest from pool K1 in Q4 2026, which converts the investment thesis into revenue; whether Biedronka’s volume-led share defence holds if Polish deflation persists; and any move by Jerónimo Martins Agro-Alimentar towards or beyond the 30 percent threshold that Norwegian takeover rules watch closely.