Cluj-Napoca begins year of retail

For the city of Cluj-Napoca, it seems 2005 will be a year characterised by retail investments by international stores as well as by domestic companies that have announced plans to expand to this area.

The major players that are due to arrive in the city by the river Somes include Selgros, Kaufland and Carrefour.

“Works on the Selgros and Kaufland stores will surely begin this year and the new Billa will be completed, while the talks to bring Carrefour to Cluj have reached an advanced stage,” Emil Boc, the mayor of Cluj, told ZF Transilvania.

German Rewe Group, which owns Billa supermarkets and the Selgros cash & carry stores, is to make two investments in Cluj. Billa will replace the old Feleacul store in the Gheorgheni neighbourhood, in an investment amounting to nearly two million euros. This will be the second Billa store in Cluj Napoca.

Kaufland has already secured construction permits for two 5,500 sqm stores in the Marasti and Manastur neighbourhoods and scheduled the start of works for March.

“The general contractor of the works will be a German company, and the construction of the two Kauflands in Cluj should be completed by the end of the year,” announced Claudiu Botea, director of Arhimar, the Cluj-based architectural firm that designed the two stores and secured the endorsements, permits and consents to build the stores.

Botea expects the final investment to come to 15 million euros, given that the acquisition of land and arrangement of the space costs 5 to 7 million euros per store.

Kaufland is the hypermarket brand of the German retail giant Schwarz. Market data show the German group has already acquired 20 locations for such hypermarkets.

As to Carrefour, company officials said recently that the French group had set expansion to Timisoara, Constanta and Cluj as its priorities, with new hypermarkets scheduled for opening in Ploiesti and Galati this year.

Investment in Cluj’s retail sector, however, goes beyond this type of store and there are plans for the construction of mall-type complexes. For instance, the Iasi-based Iulius Grup, which owns the mall in Iasi and is building another in Timisoara, is one of the companies interested in a similar development in Cluj.
transilvania@zf.ro