Oct 3 - By taking over 39 sky stores of coop Kiel, REWE Group will strengthen its position in South-West Germany.
As one of the largest food trading companies in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein with around 10,000 employees, coop eG will present itself in a stronger and more modern fashion in Northern Germany. Therefore, it will part with its sky hyperstores in South-West Germany at short notice. The stores with an average sales floor area of 1,100 square metres perfectly match the store base of REWE Group in Southern Germany in terms of size and location. With around 1,140 employees, the sky stores achieved a turnover of 150 million euros in the past year. The acquisition package includes the warehouse with 45,000 square metres as well as the headquarters with 119 employees located in the city of Ulm. All employees will be taken over, too. This was agreed in a contract signed between the Management Boards of coop and REWE in Cologne. The take over is subject to the approval of the German cartel authority. It was mutually agreed to keep the transaction price confidential.
"With this acquisition, we further expand REWE's excellent position in South-West Germany. We will quickly integrate the stores in our sales network and convert them to the REWE concept", said Lionel Souque, at REWE Group in charge of the Full-range National division. "The stores are perfectly accepted by the customers. Building on this solid foundation, we can now systematically expand our activities. With innovative concepts such as the premium private label "Feine Welt" (fine world), which was presented most recently, with regional products and customer-friendly service concepts, we will further continue our successful development in Germany", said Souque on the occasion of signing the contract in Cologne yesterday (30 September 2009).
"Even though the sky stores in Southern Germany performed very successfully in the past year, the sales of the store base in Southern Germany does make sense and is logically consistent", said Gerd Müller, spokesperson of the coop Management Board.
By selling the sales area of Ulm to REWE Group, coop will considerably strengthen its shareholder's equity. "It is essential that we rid our company from debt in this financial and economic crisis, in order to strengthen its capital base and to get it prepared it for the competition on the market", says Gerd Müller.
Lionel Souque stressed that REWE will also in future take into consideration and make use of opportunities for acquisitions as long as it makes sense from a commercial point of view and provided that the new stores complement the existing store base the best way possible. Both criteria are fulfilled in the ideal case of the sky stores.
With a turnover of almost 50 billion euros, 330,000 employees and 15,000 stores in 16 countries, Cologne-based REWE Group is one of the leading food trading and travel and tourism companies in Europe.
With a turnover of almost 1.4 billion euros, 10,200 employees and more than 250 stores, coop eG is Germany's largest consumer cooperative in food retailing.