OBI comes up with a further 10m euros for 2 stores

OBI DIY retailer, controlled by Germany’s Tengelmann, is set to invest another 10m euros this year to open two stores in Sibiu and Bucharest, after having launched the fifth location of the group in Ploiesti yesterday. “In the store in Ploiesti, we invested 5m euros, the sum we earmark for all the stores we open,” said Romano Quinzi, country manager of OBI Romania. The store in Ploiesti, opened more than one year after the others, has a total area of 10,000 square metres and around 110 employees. Amid the opening of new stores this year, turnover will rise by 70% from 2009, as the company’s representatives estimate, without disclosing 2009 financial figures. The company entered the Romanian market in 2008 and reached a number of around 600 employees in its stores of Bucharest, Pitesti, Ploiesti, Arad and Oradea. For the future, Quinzi states three stores per year will be opened, though “we will no longer have the expansion conditions of 2007”.