Sonae Group booked almost €260 million in sales from its circular economy operations during 2025, Portuguese business outlet Essential Business reported.

The figure covers the full 2025 financial year and applies to activities the Portuguese retailer classifies as circular under its internal reporting framework.

Essential Business did not break the sum down by activity, subsidiary, or material stream in the version reviewed by Circular Wire. The outlet also did not publish management comment from Sonae in the same version.

Sonae, headquartered in Maia and listed on the Euronext Lisbon PSI-20, runs a portfolio spanning food and non-food retail, real estate, and financial services. Until this line item, the group had reported circular-economy performance through qualitative ESG disclosures and pilot case studies rather than as a ring-fenced revenue category in its accounts.

The size of the figure places Sonae among a small group of European retailers willing to publish circular revenue as an auditable accounting line item. The disclosure shifts the conversation from pilot-project accounting — where tonnages recovered or units refurbished are the headline metric — to commercial-scale accounting, where revenue is the metric.

That shift matters because secondary-material buyers, recyclers, and packaging-compliance officers across Iberia now have a publicly comparable reference point for retail-sector circular activity. In revenue terms, the €260 million sits in the same band a mid-sized European recycling operator would recognise as standalone annual turnover.

What does the disclosure actually cover?

Essential Business did not publish the methodology behind the €260 million figure. The reporting does not specify whether the sum captures resale revenue, secondary-material sales, reverse-logistics fees, or service contracts tied to reusable packaging. Circular Wire has requested the methodology from Sonae investor relations.

The methodology is the disclosure.

A second open question is whether the figure includes intercompany revenue — payments between Sonae subsidiaries for circular services — or only third-party sales. The two treatments produce materially different ratios against Sonae's group-level revenue and against sector benchmarks used by analysts covering retail under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Why does the timing matter?

The disclosure lands in the first full reporting year shaped by the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the staged application of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. Under those rules, large Portuguese-listed groups must disclose revenue tied to circular business models using a defined taxonomy. Sonae's €260 million line item will function as the first publicly comparable anchor for analysts covering Iberian retail under CSRD.

For the recycling and waste sector, the disclosure carries direct implications. A confirmed revenue line on the retail-buyer side helps secondary-material suppliers calibrate commercial planning against measured downstream demand rather than forecast volumes.

Packaging off-take at Iberian retailers has been a leading demand pull for recycled PET, recycled HDPE, and recovered textiles, and a public figure at this level sets a price-discovery anchor for contract negotiations across the recycling value chain in 2026.

What comes next?

The milestone that decides what happens next is the publication of Sonae's 2025 annual report and accompanying sustainability statement, expected in the first quarter of 2026. Investors, recyclers, and packaging-compliance officers will read that document for three items:

• A full methodology note disclosing what activity types feed the €260 million number
• Any restatement under the CSRD taxonomy framework
• Unit-level targets for reusable packaging, textile recovery, or reverse-logistics operations across Sonae's banners

Without those details, the €260 million anchor remains a headline figure without the comparability required for sector-wide benchmarking. With them, Sonae sets a comparable standard that other Iberian retailers will be measured against in the 2026 reporting cycle. The methodology is the watch item.