Aldi Süd has announced that it will cut around 1,250 jobs in the Aldi International Services division by the end of 2027. The majority of these cuts will affect the international IT and digital unit Aldi DX in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Aldi Süd’s IT division had only recently ballooned to a massive size of around 3,900 employees in the past few years, with the aim of creating a uniform application landscape across all countries as part of the ‘Ahead’ project.
Last autumn, Aldi Süd then reoriented itself. Instead of an in-house approach, the focus has since shifted to outsourcing: cooperation with the Indian firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been significantly expanded. Numerous infrastructure and application services across many of the discounter’s national units are now to be taken over by Tata.
In recent years, Aldi Süd had invested heavily in recruiting and hiring IT specialists across all disciplines, competing with its main rival Lidl for IT specialists. However, the painful experiences of its sister company Aldi Nord with the difficult SAP Retail projects – The Retail Optimiser reported – have shown that too many cooks do not always make the best broth. This is particularly true when there are an extremely high number of career starters among the numerous new employees. University knowledge does not replace work experience, and too much complexity in staff organisation tends to hinder rather than help the development of robust merchandise management architectures.
From massive expansion to massive downsizing
The discounter has now officially confirmed the drastic cutbacks in its IT division, which it had only recently massively built up and expanded as the driver of its digital future. According to Lebensmittel Zeitung, the company has justified the move by citing the optimisation of processes and structures. To this end, Aldi Süd intends to launch a voluntary redundancy scheme in this area for the first time. The company has apparently not yet issued any redundancies for operational reasons.
The drastic cut is also striking because Aldi Süd had only positioned Aldi DX as the new umbrella brand for its international IT division in November 2024. The Retail Optimiser reported. On its careers website, Aldi DX describes the unit as an organisation with precisely these 3,900 IT staff, developing digital products and services for eleven countries and more than 7,500 stores.
Consolidation in Salzburg
In parallel with the massive expansion of its IT operations since 2023, Aldi Süd had been building a stronger international holding structure in Salzburg. The group is increasingly consolidating cross-functional tasks for the eleven national subsidiaries there. Fewer IT staff are also required within the company because Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd discontinued their joint online shop on 30 September 2025 in order to refocus entirely on their core product range and brick-and-mortar retail.
