Wednesday, March 30, 2005German retail corporation Rewe plans to open several Penny Market discount stores in Romania in the middle of this year. Rewe is mainly interested in opening stores in cities such as Ploie?ti, Câmpina, Tecuci, Foc?ani, One?ti, Craiova, Caracal, Constan?a, Medgidia, Alexandria and Ro?iori de Vede. Most of these cities have populations of below 100,000 people, and Rewe is hoping to take advantage of a market that has not been highly tapped into, since most of Romania’s larger cities, such as Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Ia?i, already have multiple large supermarkets and discount stores.

Rewe also announced that, over the next few years, it intends to open a total of 50 Penny Market and XXL Mega Stores in Romania. Rewe already operates 14 several highly-successful Billa supermarkets throughout Romania, mainly in large cities, as well as 8 Selgros stores. Rewe has previously made announcements that it wishes to expand its Billa and Selgros brands more extensively. The total value of the company’s investment in Romania is around 200 million euro.

Romania is currently going through a retail boom, especially in the supermarket and discount stores area. Large corporations such as Rewe and Carrefour have established very successful branches in Romania, and other retail giants such as Tesco and WalMart have announced their intention to enter the Romanian market, which is the largest in Southeastern Europe.

The mini MAX discount company said it would open three stores in Romania, in April-May of this year, in the cities of Slatina, Târgovi?te and Urziceni. It plans to open up to 100 stores until the year 2010. Meanwhile, Tengelmann, Rewe’s rival, said it would invest 200 million euro in Romania to open 120 supermarkets in the next five years.