Carrefour Romania launches first local proximity store

Carrefour Romania has opened last week its first local proximity store following a franchise agreement with local meat producer and retailer Angst under the name of  Carrefour Express Angst. By the end of this year the franchise will be extended to other Angst stores and until the end of 2012, all of the existing 24 Angst stores and the new ones that will be opened meanwhile will included in the scheme said Sorin Minea, president of Angst.

Francois-Melchior De Polignac, country manager for Carrefour Romania said that launching the new store is part of the retailer’s global multi-format strategy and it also comes to show Carrefour’s confidence in the development potential of the local market.  For the time being Carrefour plans to extend the proximity store network solely through franchise but did not disclose what other local partnerships it considers or how many Carrefour Express units will be opened on the medium run. 

Carrefour also has plans to open new units this year on its already existing formats – three more hypermarkets and eight more supermarkets respectively.

The franchise agreement with the French retailer is a flexible one and the merchandise structure of each store is negotiated separately, said Minea. He added that the partnership with Carrefour was the next step for developing the Angst stores while stressing out that his company does not plan to sell its retail network. Among the benefits of the partnership he quoted Carrefour’s retail experience, its negation power with suppliers as well as communication power. 

Three more Angst stores will be opened this year and the expansion will continue throughout next year. Last year the company registers EUR 62 million in sales and estimates a growth of about 10 percent for 2011.

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The first Carrefour Express Angst store is located in the Domenii Square in Bucharest and it has a total sales area of 390 sqm. It sells about 4,000 products out of which 700 are Carrefour products.

Carrefour Romania – timeline

Carrefour opend its first local hypermarket in Romania back in 2001. In 2007 it entered the supermarket segment by taking over the Artima chain. The retailer now operates 23 hypermarkets and 39 supermarkets.

Simona Bazavan