But those conditions were also enjoyed by the other supermarket giants, Colruyt and Carrefour. The big difference was Delhaize’s summer promotion with Pixar, the animation studio. The promotion offered packs of cards with images of the studio’s many popular characters – from films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Cars and the forthcoming Up. There is an element of gaming involved, but the cards are essentially for collecting, and children up and down the country went wild about them.

The promotion ends today (September 16), but there’s still life in the 210 million cards out there, as children trade their doubles and try to complete their collections. Last week the company organised swap-meets at several locations as the campaign approached its end. “I took the day off work specially,” said one father of two. “Every time we went shopping, opening the Pixar cards was the most exciting moment. We’re only missing one to make our collection complete.”

At one point Delhaize’s market share jumped to 26.25%. At the end of June the situation of the top three was: Colruyt 26.28%, Delhaize 25.37%, Carrefour 25.19%.

Since then the situation is likely to have changed, even if the relative positions remain the same.

• In other news, the company is to stop expanding its Delhaize City chain of small city supermarkets, because they were too expensive to run but could not open on Sundays because of the company’s agreement with unions. Delhaize’s Proxy chain, by contrast, is operated by franchisees who are willing to open on Sundays. Existing City stores will not be closed.