Carrefour forced to shut down hundreds of Dia stores

Carrefour has not found a buyer for hundreds of its former Dia stores in France yet. That may force nearly 230 stores to shut down.

Possible closures this summer

Carrefour wanted to sell 273 former Dia sores in France, but has only received offers for 46 stores, leaving 227 locations in limbo. French paper Midi Libre estimates that these stores will have to shut down “unless a miracle solution appears”.

The 2,100 employees in these stores will get a job in other Carrefour locations as much as possible. Every employee will receive three new local job offers, including one offer from outside of Carrefour group, a spokesperson confirmed.

The attempt to sell 273 underperforming French stores is part of Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard’s restructuring plan. In the past fiscal year, the retail group had to deal with 1.3 billion euro in one-time losses because of Italian and Dia store write-offs.

Intermittent relationship between Dia and Carrefour

Dia and Carrefour share a long history: the international discount chain belonged to Carrefour from 2000 to 2011, but an IPO in 2012 separated them both. They rekindled their relationship in 2014: the Spanish discounter sold its French activities to Carrefour for 600 million euro.

Most stores are located in the north and east of France and according to the restructuring plan’s targets, the entire situation has to be resolved before the end of the year.