Auchan, Casino and Intermarché join purchase alliance Everest

French supermarket groups Auchan, Casino and Intermarché are joining European purchase alliances Everest and Epic. This comes the day after Super U had to leave the alliances.

Purchasing power

Coincidence does not exist: just a day after it was announced that Coopérative U had to leave Everest and Epic, both retail alliances appear to have joined forces with a much larger French partner: Aura Retail, the new combination of Auchan, Casino and Intermarché.

This move allows Everest to grow to the same size as Eurelec, the alliance uniting Ahold Delhaize, E.Leclerc and Rewe, French trade magazine LSA reports. Everest was founded by German market leader Edeka and also has Dutch retailers Picnic and Jumbo as members. The moves are all about purchasing power: European retailers join forces to stand stronger in negotiations with the big FMCG multinationals.

New structure

The three members of the recently formed Aura Retail announced more details about their partnership in a press release on Monday evening. There will be two purchasing centres for food, based in France: one to negotiate with A-brand manufacturers and another for private labels. A service centre in Brussels will negotiate ‘on top’ with the multinationals for all countries where the three chains operate: besides France, these are Belgium, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

The alliance is also setting up two purchasing centres for non-food: one to negotiate with about 100 major brand suppliers and a second for private labels. A service centre in Luxembourg will offer services to the major non-food multinationals.