Aldi Ireland and UK group managing director Niall O’Connor: 'I see the opportunity in the market for another 50 stores in the Republic comfortably.' Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
“I’m disappointed you said that,” the polished executive says with a wry smile when Aldi Ireland’s cautious approach to publicity is brought up. “You’ve hurt my feelings.” That O’Connor is joking quickly becomes apparent. In the next breath, he admits “that would be a fair comment, historically”.Aer Lingus pilots to vote on strikes while ECB prepares to cut rates
“But we’re not done,” O’Connor insists, restating Aldi’s well-flagged plan to grow the business. “I see the opportunity in the market for another 50 stores in the Republic comfortably. I think if we look at our market share in Dublin, our store number is a long way off. I’m on record as saying that. I could see 25 to 30 of the next 50 coming in the Dublin or the Greater Dublin Area.”
So has Aldi had to pump the brakes on its growth plans? Has Ireland reached peak Aldi? “I would say no,” O’Connor says. “We’re foot to the floor. If we could go faster, we would be going faster.” Managing costs is at the core of Aldi’s business model. “The idea is we don’t expect our customers to pay for our inefficiency our business,” O’Connor says. “So our ambition is that we should run our business as cost-effectively as possible and minimise unnecessary cost.”
Aldi says its efforts to shield customers from the price shocks the company has seen on the supply side was chiefly to blame for the large increase in costs along with a hiring programme, which boosted staffing costs. “One of the things we’ve been observing is, quite often, people assume that deflation, or sort of reducing inflation is deflation. It isn’t. It’s still painful. But I think the latest figures would suggest that we’re kind of returning to some degree of normality, which is helpful.”
He is well-spoken with perhaps the faintest suggestion of an English accent – a legacy maybe of his exposure to the UK in the formative years of his career where he started in the buying department of Marks & Spencer after college – and there is little audible evidence of O’Connor’s upbringing in Cork. Yet, he credits growing up on the outskirts of Cork city next door to a farm with instilling in him a respect for Irish produce.