Billa exits Romanian market, retail network passes to Carrefour

Business Review

Carrefour announced the signing of an agreement with Rewe Group, in which Carrefour takes over the German company’s retail network of 86 Billa supermarkets in Romania. With this move, Rewe will have only the Penny Market units active locally.

The Billa supermarkets, spread across the country, add up to a total sales area of 83,000 sqm.

The acquisition, estimated by local press at EUR 100 million, is pending approval from the Competition Council.

Billa had come to the local market in 1999 and in 2014 had reached over 3,000 employees. Though the retailer had recovered in terms of profits in 2014, reaching RON 2.34 million (EUR 519,730), the company had been on a downward slope since 2011, falling from RON 5.22 million (EUR 1.15 million) to RON 3.65 million (EUR 809,954) in 2012 and to RON 2.17 million (EUR 482,934) in 2013.

Rewe Group is active in over 10 European countries. In Romania the group had a turnover of RON 2.33 billion and profits of RON 11.37 million in 2014.

“Rewe Group will focus in the future on developing the Penny discount businessin Romania,” said Frank Hensel, Rewe International AG CEO and general representative of the group.

In the first nine months of 2015 Penny Market sales increased by about 14 percent.

Carrefour is active in 35 countries with over 12,000 stores, employing 380,000 worldwide. In 2014, the group registered a turnover of RON 4.56 billion in Romania.

Click here to read the original article