The financial crisis has eaten into the revenue of the French-held Interex, which dropped to almost EUR40 million last year, less than half of what it once was, and losses doubled during 2008-2011. It tried to sell its local operations but talks fell through and it decided to close the stores and leave.
News about the sale of the network first surfaced several years ago but every time the company’s officials denied it, saying they planned to expand to as many as 40 stores. This spring, news about an exit surfaced again, after the network had not expanded as planned and even started to close stores.
The chain has ten supermarkets left in Romania, all of which outside Bucharest. The latest store closing happened in Sibiu (central Romania) this summer, while the newest supermarket of the network was opened in Drobeta Turnu Severin (SW Romania) in 2010.
The French supermarket chain decided to close the store in Sibiu at the end of July, which had been operating for more than five years in a space taken over from Univers’all Trading, one of the first supermarket chains on the market to close. It also closed its store in the Proxima center in Vaslui (eastern Romania) last year, therefore it now only has ten left.
Sources on the market say the group cancelled part of its orders and is trying to clear the existing stocks before November 15 when it is due to close its entire network. Several companies say they stopped working with Interex because of payment problems.
Each Interex supermarket posted EUR3.5 million sales last year, 2.5 times lower than in 2008, the last year of economic boom and significant consumer spending growth.
Interex, part of France’s Groupement des Mousequetaires-ITM Enterprises opened its first Romanian store in Ploiesti in 2002 and then moved to middle-sized cities across the country. It stayed away from Bucharest, where many usually start, and chose Ploiesti instead, which it considered a “Bucharest suburb” (Ploiesti is about 60 kilometers north of Bucharest). Its strategy was to go where no competitor had gone before, according to the statements of the chain’s market manager a year ago.
The downward trend of consumer spending that got Interex to leave also made Turkish-owned FIBA exit the market. It sold all its five G’Market supermarkets to Carrefour and Mega Image by the end of 2011 and left.
G’Market and Interex’s exit comes after a number of Romanian retailers were driven out of business by the competition or claimed by the crisis: Univers’all, Pic, Trident, Ethos and Minimax Discount.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)