The French E. Leclerc has not given up on expansion plans in Poland with plans of investing a further PLN200m in this country.
These funds are largely to be aimed at the construction of supermarkets over 2,000sqm. Four to five such buildings will be built this year with the first being opened in the summer. These supermarkets are to be financed from the French company’s own resources as well as credits raised on local markets.
Leclerc in France grew from small corner stores to increasingly larger units until it got to hypermarket size. In Poland it is to be the other way round, the company already possesses several hypermarkets with a floor area of over 6,000sqm, now it is to move to supermarkets three times smaller. This decision could have been made to facilitate planning permission and other administrative hurdles or indeed just because of the economic slowdown bearing in mind that the size of a supermarket can generally be increased without too many difficulties.