Retail giant Suning.com has announced that it has come to an agreement with Carrefour China for an 80% stake in the groceries chain.
The acquisition is reported to have set Suning.com back RMB4.8 billion in cash, or USD685.7 million, as the retailer was keen to capture the French chain that made net sales of RMB28.47 billion last year.
With 210 hypermarkets and 24 convenience stores, Carrefour China has enjoyed exponential growth since its launch in 1995, and is looks likely to continue to grow as it joins Suning’s empire of 8,881 stores and China’s third-largest e-commerce platform.
Nanjing based Suning has recently been consolidating its reach of brick-and-mortar neighbourhood stores, called Suning Xiaodian. The idea behind these ‘small stores’ is for people all over the nation to purchase high quality, daily goods. All of which means Carrefour’s produce can now be dispatched to a much wider customer base.
The deal will see Carrefour retain two out of seven seats on the Carrefour China's Supervisory Board, but it remains unclear as to how the grocer will handle its ongoing partnership with WeChat.
This move comes after Suning acquired 37 Wanda department stores at the start of the year, extending the continual growth of groceries and other consumer goods coming into China that has recently seen German supermarket Aldi open stores in Shanghai and American wholesaler Costco poised to open one in August.
[Cover image via Pixabay]
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