"Real is not affected directly by the financial crisis or by the current economic situation in Romania. An indirect effect, however, is the postponement of the opening of two stores, because some of the developers could not secure loans from banks to carry out their projects.
However, they may get them in 2009. Our expansion plans have not changed, they were merely postponed," said Tjeerd Jegen, general manager of Real Hypermarket Romania. According to the initial plan, Real was supposed to open seven hypermarkets on the Romania market in 2009. Jegen explained that the sales in the network's stores had increased in October compared with the previous months, with consumer spending not having gone down in this period.
Real inaugurates its 17th hypermarket in Romania, in Arad today, following an around 22 million euro investment. The retail area of the store is approximately 7,500 square metres.
The retailer will reach 20 hypermarkets by the end of the year, below the 21 target announced for 2008.
"The store in Constanta, which was scheduled to open this year will be finalised by the end of 2008 but there will not be enough time to inaugurate it this year," Jegen added.
Real, the hypermarket division of Metro, posted 367 million-euro turnover in Romania last year, an increase of 347% on 2006, as a result.
The company's manager estimates almost three-digit growth this year (i.e. close to 100%), which could put the business at more than 700 million euros.
The network opened the first store on the domestic market in the spring of 2006 and will reach total investments worth 300-350 million euros by the end of this year.
Its biggest competitor is Carrefour, a company that will exceed one billion-euro sales on the hypermarket segment.
Metro Group, whose Romanian turnover stands at two billion euros, will complete approximately 100 million euros in investments in its two networks on the Romanian market, Metro Cash & Carry and Real, in the fourth quarter. This amount accounts for almost one quarter of the value of the expansion investments planned by the international food retail networks for the last three months of the year in Romania.
Retailers left more than half of the openings scheduled for 2008 for the last quarter, some of which were delayed by causes pertaining to real estate developers or project builders.
Modern retail stores selling mostly food will total more than 400, which includes 90 hypermarkets in Bucharest and cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
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