French retailer Carrefour has not found buyers for 227 of the 273 former DIA stores in France that it plans to sell, putting them at risk of closure after 4 June, a spokesman for the company said on Monday.
The stores are part of a network of 600 that Europe's largest retailer bought from Spain's DIA in 2014.
The retailer previously said that it plans to sell or close the underperforming stores mostly in north and eastern France from its scope by the end of 2018.
Carrefour reported a full-year net loss of €531 million in February, after non-recurring charges of €1.3 billion tied to impairments in Italy and assets linked to the former DIA stores.
The spokesman, confirming reports about the stores in French media, said that out of the 273 stores that Carrefour had planned to sell, it had received firm or indicative offers for 46 of them.
He said that the company would help the 2,100 employees concerned by the 273 DIA shops to find new jobs within the Carrefour organisation.
Carrefour 2022
The closures come as part of the Carrefour 2022 transformation plan, through which the French operator is seeking to become a leaner, more efficient business.
In the first quarter of its financial year, Carrefour saw like-for-like sales go up by 0.4%, however, like-for-likes at its French operation were down 0.1%.
In its results statement, it noted that it had 'launched the process to remove 273 ex-DIA stores from the group’s scope'.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
