Carrefour harvests 100 million euros per hectare

11,500 euros. This is the amount sold by Carrefour per each square metre in its Bucharest-based store last year. Is it a little, is it a lot? We’ll spare you the calculations: this means 100 million euros for the 8,000 sqm store, that is almost one hectare. Twice the level stipulated in the business plan.
“The sales of Hiproma, the company jointly held by Hyparlo (an independent franchiser, i.e.) and Carrefour, which operates the Bucharest-based hypermarket, amounted to 100 million euros last year,” Gilles Venet, chief financial officer of the Hyparlo group told Ziarul Financiar.
Consequently, Hyparlo, which was also operating in Italy and France, has decided to sell its Italy-based operations, in order to focus on Romania.
According to the expansion plans, Carrefour aims to open one commercial centre every six months. The second store, located in Orhideelor area, will be dedicated in September, with another two hypermarkets scheduled for next year, in Colentina district and, for the first time, outside Bucharest – in Brasov.
According to the Hiproma plans, the Militari Complex will grow into a mall, with a movie theatre, a host of smaller shops (Retail Park) and a furniture store (Mobexpert). The competition is already fierce in the Militari area, with a Metro store operating here for the past several years and a Cora hypermarket in the making, according to market sources.
Is such an investment justified by the economic parameters? Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes, as it can even yield more money than the stores operating on the mature western markets.
A comparison can be made between the Bucharest-based hypermarket and the units in Italy, which Hyparlo has recently sold to Carrefour. The latter posted cumulated sales worth 113 million euros last year, almost as much as the sole hypermarket in Romania.
Hyparlo Group last year operated 15 hypermarkets in France, Italy and Romania, spreading on 100,000 square metres. Total sales exceeded one billion euros, accounting for 10,000 euros per sq metre annually, 1,500 less than in Romania.
The over 650 hypermarkets owned by Carrefour posted annual sales exceeding 50 billion euros in 2001. Annual sales per square metre revolve around 7,000 euros, 5,500 euros less than in Romania. At the same time, the sales structure on product types is similar to the one logged by Carrefour on the Mediterranean markets. “Romanian consumers are Latin consumers. They like to eat – hence the important share held by the foodstuffs in our sales volume. The structure of this volume is not that different from France or Italy,” says Francois Oliver, executive manager of Carrefour Romania.