If we quite easily associate the E.Leclerc group with Brittany and its media president Michel-Édouard Leclerc, it is more difficult to do the same for Coop Atlantique. However, this behemoth represents the first consumer cooperative in France and the first economic player in Charente-Maritime whose head office is also in the department, in this case, in Saintes. The group's first hypermarket was also inaugurated in La Rochelle – Puilboreau in 1970.
With 183 stores spread across 11 departments in the South West, Coop Atlantique has a turnover including tax of 1.12 billion euros for 2023, more than twice as high as that of the Léa Nature group for comparison. According to figures communicated by the brand at the end of 2023, it represents 14.2% market share in food distribution in France.
3,110 employees
At Coop Atlantique, there is no majority shareholder. It is the 442,000 member customers (cooperators) who own the group. An operation inherited from the end of the 19th century with the creation of the Union de Limoges, reworked many times, and which in 1994 became Coop Atlantique. Its cooperative system therefore requires it to reinvest its profits within the cooperative and its brands. In 2012, it joined forces with another cooperative, Système U (now Coopérative U) with which it manages 65 stores. It also owns 118 “Coop” brands, local grocery stores.
In 2023, it employs 3,110 employees (in Charente-Maritime as well as in the ten other departments in which Coop Atlantique is present), including 82% on permanent contracts. It is the U Cooperative which today manages the purchasing center for the 65 “U” stores, but the Atlantic Cooperative maintains a purchasing office intended, among other things, for local producers. It thus works with 750 “local suppliers” and is therefore even more anchored in the local economy.
France
