French company Cora, a member of Belgian retail group Delhaize, will invest 50 million euros in its first Bucharest-based hypermarket, located at the exit from Pantelimon district, towards Constanta. The company has already bought the land and will soon start building the hypermarket.
"The first Cora hypermarket will open in Granitul area during the first half of next year and will account for a large investment," said Regis Mougel, Cora Romania general manager.
Cora hypermarket will be the second such store on the Romanian market, after the one opened last June by French group Carrefour.
"The arrival of Cora in Romania heralds the emergence of competition in the hypermarket segment, which is in full development in all Central and Eastern European countries," says Andrei Filip, a consultant with Roland Berger.
Hypermarkets are stores spreading on more than 2,500 square metres, which sell over 40-50,000 sorts of goods, from the most sophisticated type of cheese to slippers and pajamas, from washing machines to computers.
The Romanian market is beginning to gain a certain structure, after the first steps were made by the arrival of the large international retail groups such as Metro and Carrefour.
"Over the next years, competition will become tighter in the hypermarket segment, due to the Carrefour expansion, the presence of Cora and the arrival of Leclerc, Tesco and Auchan in the next couple of years," the Roland Berger consultant added.
However, due to the high level of investments per store, the competition will post a slow increase, at least in the hypermarket sector.
Although the outlook is positive, the Romanian market is still far from the Western European outlets. "On a mature market such as Germany for instance, hypermarkets account for more than 30% of the retail foodstuffs market, while the top ten foodstuffs retailers cumulate 85% of the market," Filip says.
Data are not available in Romania yet, but the presence of only one hypermarket sets its weight at 1% tops.
According to analysts, the Central and Eastern European retail market will soon experience higher growth than the Western European sector.
This outlook triggered the expansion of the large retailers towards the Central and Eastern European area. Consequently, Romania, which has more than 22 million inhabitants (the second-largest country in the area after Poland) is a very interesting target on the expansion map.
"Although the purchase power is still smaller as compared to neighbouring countries, Romania has huge potential for the medium and long term, which cannot possibly be ignored by the large retail chains," says Andrei Filip. |
