Two of the foreign groups operating on the Romanian retail market, Germany's Rewe, through its cash & carry division Selgros and French Cora Group have seen for themselves how long the winters in Romania can be.
Both groups are either building or were supposed to begin construction of a store in Bucharest, namely a hypermarket in Cora's case and a cash & carry store in Selgros' case, but the prolonged winter forced them to rethink their strategy. They chose different solutions, though. Whereas the Germans decided to postpone the opening of the store in question, the French turned out to be more imaginative, preferring to pay more in order to make the deadline.
"The natural succession of the construction works on our hypermarket is as follows. We first build the vertical structures, then the roof and then take care of the work on the ground. The soil was frozen and when the sun came out the roof did not allow the rays to unfreeze it. Subsequently, we had to resort to a trick: we dug all the frozen soil out and brought unfrozen soil to replace it, which entailed additional costs compared to those initially scheduled," Bruno Chantepie, Cora Romania technical manager said.
However, he declined specifying the exact amount of money this "operation" required. The total investments in the hypermarket the French are planning to open in the Granitul Pantelimon area are worth 50 million euros. Cora is not the only group operating hypermarkets in Romania, though. Another France-based group, that is Carrefour, holds a hypermarket in the Chiajna area and has two more under construction in the Orhideelor area and in Colentina, in Bucharest.
On the other hand, Selgros chose to postpone. "We will open the store in Bucharest-Berceni in June this year. Unfortunately, we had to postpone the deadline initially planned for opening the store, due to the unfavourable weather conditions," said Pia Krauss, Selgros Cash & Carry Romania marketing manager. The German company had initially announced the store would open early this year.
Selgros currently holds four stores in Romania, two of which located in Bucharest (Baneasa and Pantelimon) and one in Brasov and Targu Mures each.
"Our expansion plan entails opening fifteen Selgros Cash & Carry stores in Romania. Every such store requires an approximately 15 million euro investment," Pia Krauss added. The cash & carry segment in Romania sees another player, as well - the German Metro Group, which is currently operating 15 stores.
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