Eurofood: Cora and Casino announce details of procurement JV

French retailers Casino, which is the grocery ann of the Rallye group, and Cora, in which leading retailer Carrefour holds a significant minority stake, have announced details of a procurement joint venture to be known as Opera. A new central purchasing operation will handle supply volumes of FF80bn (??12.2bn) a year and will be managed on a 50-50 basis by its two owners.

The new operation's primary goal will be to buy non-food and food products (except traditional fresh produce) from manufacturers of both branded and own-label products. It will serve 180 Geant and Cora hypermarkets and 1 355 supermarkets trading as Casino, Match, Franprix and Leaderprice, as well as more than 3 200 smaller outlets under the Petit Casino, Spar and Vival fascias. It will also supply goods to associates of the two owners' Cooperatives de Normandie-Picardie, Francap, Monoprix, Maximo, Migros France, Primisteres Reynoird, Union des coooperateurs d'Alsace and Vindemia. Together, the outlets to be served by Opera report turnover of FF170bn including tax and serve some 11 million customers a day.

BROKE OFF PROMODES JV

Shortly after the news of the JV was announced, it emerged that Casino had withdrawn from an international non-food purchasing operation with fellow retailer Promodes before setting up the Opera alliance with Cora. Casino will remain a 50% shareholder ofPromodes' Turkish operation, while Promodes will in turn retain its 50% stake in Casino's Polish business.

LEGAL CHALLENGE PENDING

Francois Bouriez, president of the Match supermarket group, will head up the new operation, while Casino purchasing director and board member Jacques-Edouard Charret will handle its day-to-day business. News of the joint venture was released just after Carrefour announced that it had referred a complaint against Cora to the Paris commercial court. Carrefour is said to have been displeased by several management decisions taken by the group in which it holds a 43.2% stake. Carrefour CEO Daniel Bernard told shareholders "We invested capital in Cora two and a half years ago and acted in an advisory capacity to its management for some time. However, as time has gone on it has come to our attention that certain business decisions have been taken which are likely to undermine the interests of Cora's employees and shareholders."