Auchan-Sma has broken off its purchasing alliance in Italy with Sisa, effective from 1 January 2017.
A long-term purchasing agreement had been effective since January 2015 and was supposed to last for four years, but the two sides jointly decided to end it earlier.
At the time, the partners said that alliance would lead to joint purchases of over €8 billlion.
After the exit of Sisa, the Auchan-Sma purchasing alliance will be the fourth largest on the local market, with a 12.7% market share (based on Nielsen data). Besides Auchan and Sma, the other partners in the alliance are cooperative Crai and the C3 consortium.
Auchan and Sma are part of the Auchan Retail Italia group, present in 19 regions of Italy with a network of 48 directly-owned Auchan hypermarkets, 1,500 supermarkets (including 269 directly-owned) under the brands Simply, Ipersimply and PuntoSimply, as well as 58 Lillapois drugstores.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
