Carrefour and Real open 7 stores each

French-held group Carrefour and German-held retailer Real, the largest hypermarket networks on the Romanian market, with turnover worth almost 1.3 billion euros in Romania in 2007, will expand in tandem this year, with each company planning seven openings. The value of the investments conducted by the two retailers will amount to around 300 million euros. The Germans have revealed a 150 million-euro budget for expansion, while the French have put the average investment per hypermarket at 20 million euros. “This is a healthy expansion of the hypermarket chains, because there is still room for all the active retailers. In two or three years, we could see a slowdown in market growth rate,” said Tjeerd Jegen, managing director of the Real Hypermarket network for Romania, a part of the German group Metro, the leading player on the Romanian food retail market.