The two companies currently operating on the cash&carry segment put at EUR1.8 billion a year are Metro Cash&Carry and Selgros.
Carrefour is the first modern retail chain trying to cover all the store formats on the market: hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, online stores, discounter stores (Supeco) and cash&carry.
Modern trade is a EUR8 billion business a year in Romania.
“Carrefour Romania (…) has decided to create a wholesale product offer for large customers, legal entities, multinational companies, restaurants, hotels and coffee shops,” reads an announcement on the company’s website. The project is called “Carrefour – Large Customers, B2B (business to business)”.
The fiercer and fiercer competition in the last few years has made a number of retailers, not just Carrefour, adjust their operations. While Carrefour tapped into several new market segments, Metro Cash&Carry started a network of smaller cash&carry stores, Punct, and launched a store franchise for small entrepreneurs, LaDoiPasi.
Carrefour officials did not return ZF’s calls for comment on their plans for the new format by the time the story was ready for posting. They did not say whether they planned on opening stores using this format or only on using a dedicated team for the segment.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)