Primark puts €225 million into Spain

Carlos Inácio, Managing Director of Primark Iberia, disclosed at the ExpoRetail Iberoamérica trade fair in Madrid on 18 June 2026 that the Irish retailer has invested €225 million in Spain over the past three fiscal years, opening 20 new stores and fully renovating 26 existing locations across the country.

The figure is the cumulative total of a multi-tranche programme that began when Primark committed €100 million to Spain in 2022, covering eight new stores and a package of refurbishments. A further €85 million for Spain and Portugal has already been announced, with roughly €40 million allocated to new Spanish openings and one store expansion in Portugal.

Primark sells clothing, accessories, footwear, beauty products, housewares, and confectionery exclusively through physical stores at the lowest price point in organised fashion retail. It holds a 3.6% share of the Spanish apparel market, behind Zara's 9.1%, and competes daily with H&M, Mango, and Inditex-owned chains including Stradivarius, Pull&Bear, and Bershka. The structural condition that separates it from every rival is the complete absence of e-commerce, which eliminates packaging and returns costs and forces footfall into stores. Spain is Primark's second-largest market globally, with 67 stores and more than 10,200 employees, a physical density no foreign low-cost challenger can replicate without the capital and decade of real-estate relationships already in place.

That position is under pressure. Shein has claimed more than half of ultra-fast fashion sales by value in Spain, gaining 7.5 percentage points of market share between 2021 and 2022 alone, eroding Primark's long-held claim to the lowest price on the high street. Improving price perception is now a stated priority. Globally, like-for-like sales fell 2.5% in the first half of fiscal year 2025, meaning the company's headline revenue growth depends entirely on new store openings rather than existing-store performance.

José Luis Martínez de Larramendi, Primark's International Expansion Director, addressed the market-selection logic directly at the same Madrid event.

"We look for markets with economic and political stability that make sense." — José Luis Martínez de Larramendi, International Expansion Director.

Inácio added that physical retail spaces remain the true essence of Primark's model, with the format structurally reducing return rates and lowering supply chain costs relative to omnichannel competitors. The company is targeting operations in 21 countries by end of 2026, up from 19 at the close of last year, and has established a franchising model in the Middle East while continuing to operate its 41 United States locations directly.

The timing of the ExpoRetail disclosure carries significance beyond retail metrics. Associated British Foods is progressing a demerger of Primark onto the London Stock Exchange, targeted for before end-2027, and requires a growth narrative capable of standing without the ABF balance sheet behind it. Spain, the one geography where Primark retains untapped provincial density and where the €225 million has already built the infrastructure base, is the clearest evidence that store-count-driven expansion can substitute for the organic growth the business is not currently generating.

The investment does not solve the like-for-like problem. It demonstrates that Primark can still expand its revenue base through capital deployment at scale, which is precisely the argument a standalone listed retailer needs to make before it faces public markets alone.