The Swedish Shopping Centre Directory (SSCD) is a regular annual survey of the Swedish shopping centre sector. To quality for entry, shopping centres and industrial estates must have at least five stores and lettable space of at least 5,000 square metres. Town centres and shopping streets are not included in the survey.

In this year’s summary, the number of shopping centres and industrial estates has increased to 373, 16 more than the corresponding point last year. This increase is primarily due to the steady growth of a number of trading locations that can now be defined as industrial estates. Another reason is that a handful of smaller shopping centres and industrial estates have been “detected” in this year’s survey. Four new build commercial locations have also been completed. These are Mall of Scandinavia in Solna, Avion Shopping in Umeå, Handelskvarteret Valvet in Karlstad and Gränbystaden in Uppsala.

Retail turnover in shopping centres and industrial estates continues to increase and amounted to SEK 278 billion in 2015. Compared to turnover in 2014, this is an increase of SEK 21 billion, which accounts for half the growth in retail trading in the period. This also corresponds to growth of 7 percent, compared to just under 6 percent growth for the retailing sector in 2015. Shopping centres and industrial estates act as a locomotive for retailing that, despite an acceleration of the retail digitalisation process, continues to comprise a significant platform in this channel with 38 percent of total sales in retail trading. Shopping centres retain 20 percent marketshare while industrial estates have expanded their marketshare to almost 18 percent, which corresponds to an increase of almost one percent on the previous year. E-commerce is also growing, which means that other bricks and mortar retailing continues to be squeezed in terms of marketshare.

Within food retailing, shopping centres and industrial estates have a slightly weaker position with a marketshare of around 32 percent. Industrial estates in particular have strengthened their position within this segment. Marketshare has increased by 1.8 percent and now comprises just over 13 percent of food retailing. Shopping centres and e-commerce are gaining small marketshares while other bricks and mortar retailers slipped 2.2 percent.

Marketshares within discretionary goods retailing are significantly larger and amounted to 42 percent in 2015. However, there were only minor changes in terms of growth compared to the previous year. Shopping centres lost 0.5 percent while e-commerce gained about the corresponding marketshare. Industrial estates and other bricks and mortar retailers retained more or less their marketshares from 2014.

A historic look in the rear view mirror for 2005-2015 shows that shopping centres, industrial estates and e-commerce have taken 10 percent marketshare from other retailers. It should be emphasised that shopping centres and industrial estates have taken an equal proportion of marketshare as the fast growing e-commerce in this period. However, e-commerce is very likely to enjoy more rapid growth than other sales channels as online food retailing is starting to take off.

SSCD also includes construction projects embracing entirely new trading locations and projects where existing trading locations are being renovated or expanded. Altogether, HUI Research monitors over 200 projects ranging from the concept stage to completion. These projects add up to 2.6 million square metres that can come to fruition in the future. However, many of these projects are being delayed or cancelled due to obstacles such as zoning plans, financing, letting demand etc. The HUI Research forecast for the period up to and including 2020 shows that 965,000 square metres of new retail space can be added to the existing portfolio of just over nine million square metres of shopping centres and industrial estates.

Viewed in terms of the total 2.6 million square metres planned broken down by county, Västra Götaland leads the way with 745,000 square metres of space planned. This shows a clear shift of focus from Stockholm and Malmö to the Gothenburg region in recent years.

The equivalent of 630,000 square metres of retailing space are planned in Stockholm, while just 180,000 square metres are planned in Skåne (Malmö etc.) Plenty of new retailing space has been added in Malmö over the past five years, which has sated the market, for the time being at least. However, several projects are in progress in other parts of Skåne, of which the largest is C4 Shopping in Kristianstad.