Eurofood: Casino opens hypermarket in Poland

As announced last year (see Eurofood, 19 November 1998, p10) French food retailer Casino has opened its fifth Polish store. The new outlet, in Bydgoszcz, boasts sales surface of 16 680[m.sup.2] and cost US$45m (??41.9m) to build. The complex is spread over three hectares in the town centre. It comprises a hypermarket, which trades under the Geant name and accounts for about half of the sales space, and a commercial centre with 43 shops. The complex has created 680 jobs and provides business for as many as 800 suppliers. Nearly all the products sold in the centre (95%) are sourced locally.

Casino expects to open six more hypermarkets this year, which is one more than the group originally anticipated. These will be located in the cities of Warsaw, Torun, Lodz, Szczecin, Wroclaw and Katowice. The French group also expects to open three new Leader Price discount supermarkets before the end of the year, announced Daniel Sicard, CEO of Geant Polska.

BRIDGEHEAD FOR FURTHER EXPANSION

In total, the St. Etienne-based group will invest some US$250m in Poland this year. And that is just the beginning: by 2004, Casino hopes to own 30 Geant hypermarkets and 250 Leader Price outlets in the East European country.