“We have significant growth in 2019 and the target is to become the leader of the grocery retail as soon as possible,” says Jean Richard de Latour, 38, the French executive who has been running Carrefour’s operations in Romania for a year.
Carrefour has never been the top retailer on the Romanian market, with Kaufland in the lead for more than five years, after having replaced Metro Cash & Carry, the previous leader by sales.
However, the gap between number one and number two – Kaufland and Carrefour narrowed to less than RON400 million last year, the lowest ever. Carrefour’s total sales (generated by four companies) reached RON10.5 billion.
Carrefour has 370 stores in Romania, either hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores and an online store. It is the retailer with most store formats in Romania.
It opened more than 20 to 30 new stores in each of the last few years, most of them small format stores, but continued to inaugurate hypermarkets, as well. It also acquired retailer Billa’s over 80-strong supermarket chain in Romania in 2015.
Carrefour will step up expansion but that will be only because its focus is now on smaller stores. It will reach the 400-store mark in Romania very soon, Jean Richard de Latour said. Carrefour will continue expansion on all formats but focus on Supeco (discount stores) and convenience stores, the executive added.(EUR1=RON4.7294)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)