The retail giant Carrefour has announced that it is officially buying the Cora stores from the Belgian group Louis Delhaize, which will switch to the Carrefour brand, as well as the Match stores, which will keep theirs.
The group said in a statement that it had “finalized today the acquisition of the Cora and Match brands in France“, as well as their purchasing center Provera. The operation is carried out on the basis of an enterprise value of 1.05 billion euros.
Louis Delhaize owned 60 Cora hypermarkets and 115 Match supermarkets, often located in the north-eastern quarter of France. According to Carrefour, they represent around 2.4% of the highly competitive food distribution market and employ 22,000 people.
This acquisition, “the most important for Carrefour since the acquisition of Promodès“in 1999, according to CEO Alexandre Bompard, allowed Carrefour to consolidate its second place behind E.Leclerc, which holds almost a quarter of the market, and ahead of Les Mousquetaires/Intermarché which bought many stores from the struggling Casino group.
Carrefour announced in mid-June that it had obtained an exemption from the Competition Authority to carry out this acquisition without waiting for its decision on the operation, which was expected “by the end of the first quarter of 2025” according to Carrefour.
The distributor estimates “limited competition issues” because of “the strong geographical complementarity of the two groups“a you”benefit of the operation” pour “the consumer“.
During a telephone press briefing on Monday, Alexandre Bompard clarified that “From October, each Cora store that changes its sign“will lower prices”at least 10% on nearly 3000 products” sold. A figure to be compared with the number of references sold in hypermarkets, between 20 and 35,000.
