Moscow, 4 September 2025 – X5 Group (MOEX: X5), a leading Russian food retailer, announced the launch of its X5 Big Shelf online platform at the Eastern Economic Forum. Developed in partnership with SME Corporation, the project brings together all X5 initiatives focused on small and medium-sized businesses, making it faster and easier to start working with X5 and significantly expanding producers’ sales opportunities. Every year, more than 50 suppliers grow into large-scale manufacturers and leave the SME register thanks to their partnership with X5, and the Company expects this number to rise.
The X5 Big Shelf website offers a place where local producers and small businesses can explore X5’s support tools and initiatives for SMEs and quickly launch their work with the Company.
“X5 places strong emphasis on working with SMEs and rolls out new projects every year to help entrepreneurs. Today, these initiatives go beyond sales support to include educational programmes, logistics solutions, franchising opportunities and much more. We aim to continue to develop existing tools and create new ones, which will not only increase the number of small businesses among our partners but also boost their share in our turnover. Importantly, our SME solutions are available in all 75 regions where X5’s retail chains and businesses operate, helping to provide residents across the country with affordable, high-quality products,” said Boris Ogarkov, Director of Government Relations at X5.
Key initiatives under X5 Big Shelf include:
- Agricultural Aggregator, a project designed to connect farmers with small sales volumes. The operator offers pre-sale preparation of fruit and vegetables and arranges centralised supplies to X5’s Pyaterochka, Perekrestok and Chizhik stores. X5 currently partners with 17 aggregators, with total purchases of farm produce in 2025 expected to exceed 80,000 tonnes.
- Farmer’s Corner, a joint project of X5 and SME Corporation designed to showcase products from local producers in dedicated shop-in-shop zones. X5 has already opened 47 farmer’s corners in its stores and plans to expand the project further.
- A training programme for SMEs that includes the Farmer’s Academy, where retail chains share practical and theoretical expertise and review best practices, while development institutes provide information on available benefits and incentives.
- Agricultural Contracts, an additional support tool that involves an agreement between the Company and producers on the future supply of fruits and vegetables to X5 retail chains with pre-harvest financing.
Experienced retail entrepreneurs can also take advantage of the Okolo franchise, which provides access to supplies from X5’s product assortment, requires no upfront fees or royalties, and includes a classified system for selecting and ordering goods from suppliers.
Working with small businesses is one of X5’s key priorities. As a leading player in Russia’s retail market, the Company focuses on nurturing suppliers from the ground up, training them, jointly designing partnership models, and uniting government and business-led efforts to support SMEs. Today, small producers make up more than 50% of X5’s partners, while local suppliers account for up to 30% of the retail chain assortment in the Company’s regions of operation.