120 years after it was set up, the Bucharest-based Stela soap plant (near Bucur Obor) will be entirely torn down and replaced by a very different kind of building, a Kaufland hypermarket.
"On July 12th, one wing of the seven-floor building that is part of the former Stela plant complex was demolished. The left wing demolition is scheduled for Friday 30th," explained Catalin Radu, one of the associates of Implozia Construct Bucuresti, a company which specialises in demolition works.
He stated that the terrain is owned by Kaufland Romania, which will build a hypermarket on the location of the former plant. The land the plant was build upon had previously belonged to Colgate Palmolive.
This is not the first time that the Romanian market has been provided information concerning the increasing interest of the German Schwartz group, owner of the Kaufland store brand.
Representatives of the Timisoara, Targu-Mures and Targu-Jiu city councils had previously stated that the German group had acquired or is interested in acquiring some terrain in order to develop Kaufland hypermarkets.
Moreover, international trade publications have indicated that the Kaufland group already owns 20 locations across Romania.
Kaufland Romania officials did not provide any comments at the time of going to press.
Unlike other competitors in the domain, the German group is very aggressive in developing its Kaufland hypermarkets and Lidl discount stores.
One good example in this respect comes from the Polish market, which Kaufland entered in the second half of 2001. By the end of last year, it boasted 30 "compact" Kaufland stores (with a retail area of 3,000 square metres, smaller than that of traditional hypermarkets, but larger than that of an ordinary supermarket) and 60 discount stores under the Lidl brand.
The German group also embraced the same strategy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where it holds the top position in terms of number of stores - over 50 hypermarkets in the Czech Republic and 22 in Slovakia.
At present, the brands held by the Schwarz group include Kaufland (hypermarkets), Handelshof, Concord (supermarkets) and Lidl (discount stores).
The total number of stores owned by the German group exceeds 5,600, and its number of employees stands at 80,000. The group's main shareholder is billionaire Dieter Schwartz.
The basic strategy of the group is an aggressive pricing policy. This is realised through both the Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG arm, which controls the network of discount stores, and through Kaufland Stiftung & Co. KG, which controls the hypermarket, cash & carry and distribution networks.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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