Carrefour bundles purchasing for six countries

Carrefour is setting up its own international buying centre in Spain, to bundle its purchasing for six of its main markets (including France and Belgium).

International contracts

After Carrefour blew up all partnerships with competitors, the French retailer is setting up its own European buying centre. A purchasing office called Eureka is to open in Madrid in early 2023, LSA reports. The centre will handle the purchasing for six countries where Carrefour operates: Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain.

Eureka will negotiate exclusively with major suppliers and brands, though: local companies will still do business with the national departments. Carrefour’s intention is for multinationals to have one contact person, one administrative process for orders and invoices and therefore one international contract. Through this new system, Carrefour also wants to be able to make more data-driven decisions, better measure commercial performance and monitor operations more accurately.

Pressure on alliances

Coincidentally, Italian authorities have just started investigating Carrefour Italy for having committed fraud with fake invoices for four years. Such cases may come under greater scrutiny. The international grouping of purchases, however, should mainly give Carrefour economies of scale. International chains such as Lidl and Aldi have been buying on a European scale for some time, and they are taking advantage of this.

There is also increasing pressure on purchasing alliances between competing retailers because of competition authorities. At the end of this year, Carrefour is already ending its cooperation with the Louis Delhaize group, which had existed since 2014. On 1 October, Envergure, the buying alliance the group set up with Système U on the French market in 2019, will also come to an end.