News

Wednesday, 08.02.2012

In addition to Atac supermarkets, Auchan hypermarkets, Leroy Merlin and Decathlon stores, Auchan is going to develop one more format in Russia, Raduga hypermarkets. The 5-7k sq. m. stores will be discount hypermarkets, reports Kommersant. First two stores are preparing to be open in Kaluga and Penza. Besides, a few months ago a Raduga was open in Trifonovskaya Street, 4 in Moscow in the premises of a former supermarket Ramstore. In 2007, Auchan bought 14 Ramstore hypermarkets from the Turkish Enka for $182 million, while Enka kept Ramstore supermarkets. General Manager of the Ramstore chain Murat Duhran explained that the premises in Trifonovskaya Street were not a part of the deal with Auchan and that Ramstore simply "moved out".

Senior Analyst of Renaissance Capital Natalia Zagvozdina reminds us that Auchan used to build "boxes" for their stores. Yet lately it started leasing areas in shopping centers. "Due to the problems developers are going through there are less and less offers of vacant premises in the market. As for regions, shopping centers usually give really small areas to food anchors," she says. For example, Magnit is opening relatively small hypermarkets, some of them are only 3-4k sq. m., says the expert. Last week Carrefour opened its second hypermarket in Russia, a store in the Krasnodar based shopping center called Galaktika is only 8k sq. m. while the first Carrefour store is 14k sq. m.

Hypermarkets like Auchan usually make $12-16k per one square meter, says Ms Zagvozdina, and adds that for regions this index can be much lower. "A regional consumer does not need such a wide range of goods as there is in Moscow stores while the costs for opening doors are the same. The investments into the Krasnodar Carrefour made €7.8m. This means the internal rate of return can go down," she says.