In an effort to capture a greater market share, German food retailer Rewe yesterday (21 September) revealed that it intends to re-flag around 3,000 supermarkets under the new national Rewe sales brand. The company is also increasing its store base with the planned addition of 600 stores by 2011.
“We will make substantial investments in our full-range business in Germany over the coming years. For 2007 alone we have planned 140 new store openings and 60 additional expansions of existing Rewe stores with investments of over EUR220m – and even more are planned for 2008”, said Rewe CEO Alain Caparros.
In the medium term Rewe said that the nationally unified brand and store openings will increase its market share from 17.8% to 20.8%.
Caparros said that the core of the strategy was developing the company’s food retail business by strengthening supermarkets, hypermarkets and discount chains while expanding the company’s other core business, tourism and travel.
Looking at the international scene Caparros said: “We will move our internationalisation efforts forward. Internationalisation is based on our flourishing core businesses in the German and Austrian domestic markets.”
But he emphasised that international expansion would not cut into necessary investments in the domestic market. We will concentrate our investments on increasing store base density in those countries where we are already present, and – for the time being – we will not spend additional millions on conquering new national markets”, Caparros commented.
Rewe plans to invest EUR130m in developing its business in Russia and Poland in the next year, where it intends to focus international expansion.
