Intermarché puts non-strategic factories up for sale

Groupement Les Mousquetaires, the company behind French supermarket chain Intermarché, appears to be moving away from its vertical integration model. The group is putting eight additional food factories up for sale.

Difficult to make profitable

Agromousquetaires, the group’s industrial branch, wants to sell eight of its 55 French production units. These are sites that the retailer considers “non-strategic”: they include plants that package rice and spices, produce fruit juice or process surimi and other fish products. The move affects 1,200 employees, LSA reports.

Intermarché (and Netto) produce roughly 40 % of its private label products in its own factories, which also work for other customers – including Auchan. However, this unique model of vertical integration is proving increasingly difficult to make profitable and some plants are quite outdated. Moreover, the group no longer considers production of ultra-processed food to be a core business. It does, however, still keep the processing of beef, pork and fish in-house, as well as the production of vegetable products.

Earlier this year, the Musketeers already sold prepared meals producer Sveltic to Belgian food processor What’s Cooking, best known for its Come a Casa pasta dishes.