Metro Cash & Carry Romania opens its seventh store

Metro Cash & Carry Romania yesterday opened its seventh store in the country and the third in Bucharest, Metro Voluntari, reaching thus its goal to cover the market of cash & carry services in Bucharest.

The official inauguration was attended by the businessman who brought Metro in Romania, Ion ?iriac, shareholder of German consortium Metro Cash & Carry.

Since it entered the Romanian market, Metro has invested around 210 million Deutsche marks and has created more than 2,500 new jobs. This year’s turnover is expected to reach 750 million Deutsche marks. Investments in the Voluntari-based store stood at about 30 million Deutsche marks.

The commercial area amounts to 8,100 square meters, with 26 cash desks. The range of products available in the Voluntari store includes, just like at the level of the entire Metro chain, around 15,000 items – of which 7,025 food products (dairy and meat products, fruit and vegetables, drinks etc.) and 7,242 non-food products (office equipment, detergents, dishes, toys, footwear, clothes, car accessories, construction materials, etc.)

What makes Metro Voluntary different from other Bucharest-based stores is a bread oven that provides newly baked bread each day, and a fresh fish department including a basin from where customers can buy live fish.

“Metro Voluntari benefits from state-of-the-art equipment and a display pattern that places it among the most avant-gardist stores in Europe,” said Dusan Wilms, general manager of Metro Cash & Carry Romania.

Metro entered the Romanian market in 1996, introducing the cash & carry system, the latest form of wholesale self-service commerce.

Since then, it has opened six stores: two in Bucharest and one in Timisoara, Brasov, Constanta and Cluj. The company has accelerated its growth pace this year, when it has opened three stores, as compared to previous years, when it used to open around one store per year.

In the following years, Metro plans to open four new stores per year, in order to cover the Romanian cash & carry market. “We have two stores in development in Iasi and Bacau, and they are to be opened next spring. The next store will be opened in Craiova,” Dusan Wilms stated.