Finding solutions for only six of the remaining Match and Smatch supermarkets in its possession, the Belgian Louis Delhaize Group now closes the remaining nineteen stores. 163 people will lose their jobs.
19 shops close
2023 was the year of the complete disintegration of the Match and Smatch chains, as the foreign stores were all sold and even the majority of the Belgian stores found a willing new owner. In September, Colruyt Group announced it would take over 57 Belgian stores, leaving only 25 shops behind. Their fate is now also clear: just six supermarkets are still saved, the rest will be closed.
Carrefour acquires three stores (Fleurus, Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe and Zele), Delhaize will take one (Leuze) and Intermarché another one (Binche). In Beaumont, negotiations are still ongoing with a potential buyer. Two more stores were subject of the acquisition press release: the stores in Thulin and Kessel-Lo were recently converted from Smatch into Louis Delhaize (as part of a bigger, but aborted strategy) and as such, they remain within the group as part of Delfood.
These acquisitions will allow 150 employees to keep their jobs at the same wage conditions, Louis Delhaize claims. The remaining shops will close between mid-January and March. Their 163 employees will be made collectively redundant, according to a social plan negotiated on 1 December. Six premises will subsequently be taken over by Buurtslagers, which will take over the leases.
Talks are still ongoing with potential buyers about the logistics operations. In contrast, there was no interest in the other central services, leaving the 174 employees with their notice. The management now hopes that the competition authorities will also quickly give their approval for the acquisitions, “so that every employee will have clarity about their future prospects”.
