E.Leclerc seeks to buy 12 French Colruyt supermarkets

Following Intermarché‘s bid for 81 Colruyt supermarkets in France, local market leader E.Leclerc has also made a concrete offer for twelve supermarkets. The fate of the dozen remaining stores is uncertain.

Relatively small stores

While Colruyt Group is continuing talks about handing over 81 supermarkets and 44 Dats 24 petrol stations to Groupement Mousquetaires, the group behind supermarket chain Intermarché, the retailer has also received a bid from E.Leclerc to acquire half of the remaining supermarkets and 120 employees, the Belgian company confirmed to L’Echo.

Members of the cooperative Mouvement E. Leclerc will take over the stores, which are relatively small shops of around 1,000 sqm. The French market leader is best known for its large hypermarkets, but the retailer is moving towards a multi-format strategy that also includes smaller Express shops and stand-alone collection points (“Drives”). This acquisition would therefore fit in well with this new strategy.

If both deals get done, a dozen stores would still be waiting for a solution. Finding a solution for those will be less obvious, retail watcher Olivier Dauvers reports. He mapped out the remaining supermarkets, and found out that several remaining Colruyt stores are close to the German border, where competition with hard discounters is even more of an issue than elsewhere. Other stores are in markets with many local competitors, including Intermarché.