Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine LLC (Kyiv) plans to start opening the Beri-Vezi store with an area of 1,500-2,000 square meters from 2019. The stores will be small wholesale bases for traders, Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine CEO Olivier Langlet has said. “Since we have 25 stores in each regional center of Ukraine, we decided that from 2019 we will continue our expansion in the country and will open satellite stores. These are small shops under the METRO brand, which will provide goods for clients-traders,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.
According to Langlet, the cost of opening one store of the new format will be EUR 150,000-300,000. These stores are already operating in Lutsk and Ternopil under the METRO Base brand.
The area of the stores of the new format will be 1,500-2,000 square meters, the number of commodity items – no more than 3,000 SKU. The range will include groceries, pastries and beverages.
According to him, the company does not plan to develop large formats like hypermarkets in Ukraine.
“I can’t say now which cities we will probably go to, but we believe that we will open about 15-20 stores of this format… It is better to open more than 20 stores in the regions than one big one, since these are large costs that do not provide return on investment in a short time,” Langlet said.
