The CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Retail has revealed ambitious plans to open more than 100 Carrefour stores this year across the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.
And Hani Weiss told Arabian Business the openings, which would see their Carrefour operations increase from 358 to 450 by the end of 2021, will have a particular focus on the convenience model, which has proven especially popular over the ongoing pandemic period.
“2020 has been very remarkable in terms of the opening of stores. We have opened more than 51 stores and we are targeting a little bit more than that this year. We are working very actively,” Weiss said.
Weiss said the first Carrefour opened in Uganda at the beginning of last year, and the first Uzbekistan location opened in December.
“We will be accelerating our regional expansion in Saudi, Pakistan, Egypt and we will continue to double down on Africa, Kenya, Uganda and a new company we will be announcing soon,” he continued. “We’ll also be doubling down in the CIS markets, Georgia, Armenia and Uzbekistan.”
Carrefour plans to nearly double the number of stores that they have open in 2020.
“We have really a busy year ahead. Today we stand at 358 stores, my target is by the end of 2021, we finish with 450 stores.”
Weiss revealed that more than 117 fulfilment centres were opened in 2020, with dark stores, traditional retail stores been converted to local fulfilment centres also opening in the UAE and the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Hani Weiss, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Retail.
He said: “Nowadays the focus it’s not what we need, it’s what the customer needs, and we see much more importance for convenience so the focus will be much more on supermarkets, but also the small convenience model which are becoming very famous post-pandemic because we’ve seen a major shift to the supermarkets, mini-markets and online versus the hypermarket. So instead of doing the four-time visit to the hypermarket per month, you will do twice and your daily shopping will be consumed from the supermarket or the e-commerce.
“We’ll have multiple formats, we will double down on the supermarkets and the mini-markets.”
Carrefour have been working with 40 SMEs in 70 different categories and Weiss explained that local production has increased from five percent of total volume at the start of 2020 to 15 percent by the end of the year – this is expected to rise further to 20 percent by the end of 2021.
“We won’t be relying only on brick-and-mortar or on e-commerce. It’s not either or, it is both of them.
This is the new norm. It is a mix between offline and online and retailers have to work very hard in order to provide the full omni-channel experience for the customers,” he added.
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