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It’s a fact: Coop confirms closure of Fakta supermarket chain

Santiago Sebastian
September 20th, 2022


This article is more than 2 years old.

Last store will shut down before the end of 2022

It’s all over for Fakta (photo: Søren 1997)

Rising prices and widespread inflation have cause large retailers to lose a large proportion of their profits, and now the first major casualty has been announced, although it might not be a huge surprise to many.

But now it’s a fact: Fakta, a chain launched in 1981 that was acquired Coop in 1987, will soon be no more. All of its stores will close by the end of 2022.

Writing on the wall
Ever since the country’s second largest supermarket chain owner Coop – best known for the Brugsens, Kvickly and Irma – launched budget chain Coop 365discount earlier this year, the writing has been on the wall for Fakta, which less than a decade ago had 450 stores, including three in Germany.

Shoppers will have noticed that Coop 365discount has been quickly taking over Fakta premises, while the ones remaining, heading into their last winter, have started to resemble ghost ships.

Discount-orientated
According to Kræn Østergård Nielsen, the managing director of Coop, Danes are once again checking price tags and “going to discount shops a lot more”.

Nevertheless, the industry would have been hard-pushed to not call Fakta a discount store as well in recent years. Coop 365discount might be a discount store in name, but its prices are more or less the same.

Coop has also announced a number of other changes – most notably the merger of the Kvickly and SuperBrugen chains, which for some time now have been sharing the same weekly discount promotion


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”