Auchan Retail, Casino Group, Metro and DIA have officially launched a new purchasing platform, Horizon International Services, following approval from the relevant competition authorities.
Horizon was first unveiled last summer, and has been described as an alliance that ‘moves away from purely transactional negotiations’ towards a more collaborative type of negotiating.
The agreement covers 47 countries across Europe, Asia and South America in which the four firms operate.
'New Vision'
‘Horizon International Services brings together players that share a new vision of supplier relations, which, for instance, can go from putting services in place for major international suppliers, by drawing on their complementary geographic locations, to providing support for SMEs in their international development,’ the groups said in a joint statement.
The four partners will also be able to avail of interlocking activities such as multi-format retailing, wholesale, delivery services, and so forth.
The group said that the agreement will enable the four firms to ‘pool their resources to forge balanced and innovative relationships based on a catalogue of common, scalable services’.
© 2019 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.
