The second store the owners of Dedeman, brothers Adrian and Dragos Paval, plan to open in Timisoara will be built in the Calea Sagului area, where the two bought the 22-hectare former site of a leather goods factory together with South Africa’s NEPI. NEPI plans to build a mall on its side of the plot.
The investment in the Dedeman store and the mall should amount to some EUR100 million and should be completed this fall. NEPI got 18 hectares of the plot, while Dedeman the other four, according to the latest information available. The two paid about EUR15 million to EUR20 million for the land, according to ZF’s estimates.
Dedeman officials did not say when the store should open, and NEPI did not say when it planned to inaugurate the mall, either.
The new Dedeman store in Timisoara will use the same format as the rest of the stores the retailer has opened lately. Given the number of employees it seeks and the size of the plot of land, it should cover about 15,000 square meters, as much as the store on Theodor Pallady Boulevard in eastern Bucharest, inaugurated this April.
Other rivals operating in Timisoara are Praktiker and Hornbach, so competition over workforce is getting fiercer, considering jobless rate in the Timis County is less than 2%, one of the lowest in the country.
Dedeman posted 3.4 billion lei (EUR757 million) revenue and RON416 million net profit in 2014, according to Trade Registry data. It had more than 7,500 employees last year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)