Effective 15 October, there will be a change of management at Emperia Holding, the Polish business owned by Maxima Grupė, which runs the Stokrotka retail chain. Current CEO Dariusz Kalinowski has decided to step down as chairman of the management board and CEO. The new CEO of the company will be  Arūnas Zimnickas, a member of the board at Maxima Grupė. Dariusz Kalinowski will be appointed to the supervisory board.

With the merger of the Stokrotka and Aldik retail chains that owned by Maxima Grupė in Poland, the company currently operates almost 500 stores, with plans to open around 60 more retail sites by year-end.

“We’ve decided to entrust the leadership of this strategically important group company to tye professional who has built up extensive experience in the field of retail and knows the group’s operations very well. I have no doubt that Arūnas’s expertise will help ensure successful implementation of business strategy in Poland. At the same time, I want to thank Dariusz Kalinowski, whose contribution has been key in the period of our ambitious expansion in Polish market. It will be of great benefit for us having such an experienced retail expert in the supervisory board,” says Dalius Misiūnas, the chairman of the board and CEO of Maxima Grupė.

“Leading a business in a dynamic market like Poland is a big and at the same time very interesting professional challenge. I hope in this role to successfully apply international experience and knowledge I’ve acquired running retail chains in a variety of countries. My priority as a manager will be to ensure the smooth implementation of integration and expansion projects,” Arūnas Zimnickas notes.

Zimnickas led the Supersol chain in Spain from 2014 until this month. Before that he served as head of Maxima in Lithuania for three years, and prior to that led Maxima in Latvia for more than three years.

“The company is entering a new stage with an ambitious vision. Working on the supervisory board, I’ll seek to share with the new management the insights and experience I have gained over more than 15 years with this company. Organisation is facing interesting challenges and pursuing exciting goals, I’m happy that I’ll be able to contribute to their implementation,” says Dariusz Kalinowski.

In 2017, Stokrotka had turnover of 597 million euros and Aldik had turnover of 52 million euros.