Metro Cash & Carry to open another store in Bucharest

German retailer Metro Group, the biggest retailer in Romania by sales, will open a new Metro Cash & Carry store in the capital this year, the company has announced.

This will be the retailer’s 25th outlet in Romania and will be located in east Bucharest, said the firm, without specifying the precise location or required investment.

This is the second store Metro Cash & Carry has opened in the last three years, after expanding nationwide.

The latest was in Deva, where the firm opened a 9,000-sqm unit at a cost of EUR 20 million. The new branch will start trading in the first half of this year, the company said. Metro Cash & Carry already runs four stores in Bucharest.

Metro Cash & Carry entered the Romanian market in 1996, being the first modern retailer to expand in the country.

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Another brand in the group’s portfolio, Real hypermarket, joined the market in 2006.

Most of Metro’s investments since have focused on expanding the Real hypermarket chain throughout the country. Metro Cash & Carry has

also invested in upgrading several existing stores at an outlay of EUR 36 million.

In 2008, the group posted EUR 2.3 billion in sales on the Romanian market.

Metro did not specify its 2009 sales in Romania, but said its Eastern European sales had fallen by 13 percent last year compared to the previous.

Corina Saceanu