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Carrefour Interview
 February 23rd, 2006Supermarket war in Malta < Malta > Interviewer : Kurt Sansone Interviewees : Ray Mintoff (Shareholder in the Shopwise Group ) The supermarket scene is currently in turmoil with foreign-owned chains eyeing the small Maltese market and Maltese investors seeking ways and means of surviving the harsher competition that is developing. Two years ago when Sisa, the first foreign chain, opened in Malta, a group of Maltese supermarket owners got together to combine their financial resources to be able to compete on what they believed could be a level playing field. That effort was undermined by the authorities who decreed the arrangement as being a cartel. With competition from abroad growing harsher, as German discount chain Lidl is soon set to open its doors, investors forming the Shopwise Group felt they had no other choice but to seek a foreign partner themselves. RAY MINTOFF, one of the shareholders in the Shopwise Group says that to be able to compete with the foreign-owned chains, the Group entered into an agreement with France’s Carrefour. It is the typical ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ philosophy. The Group’s new supermarket in Naxxar, which is slated for opening by October, will be offering a number of competitively priced products under Carrefour’s franchise brand GS. “We had no other choice but to join one of the foreign chains and we chose the best one in Europe,” Mintoff says. “If we did not reach an agreement with Carrefour we would have simply vanished from the supermarket scene and in a couple of years’ time it would have been solely dominated by foreign investors.” Mintoff acknowledges that the supermarket scene is currently unsettled with the investment that is pouring into it. The Naxxar supermarket alone will have cost a total Lm4.5 million. The market will eventually have to settle down, he says, confident the Shopwise Group will be in a strong position to weather the storm. What investment have you put into this supermarket?
We calculate that the total investment would top Lm4.5 million. The project includes 20 apartments and nine penthouses, a supermarket on two levels connected by walkways not lifts and a three-storey underground car park. What turnover are you expecting from this supermarket? The highest turnover possible but we are projecting a yearly target of between Lm5 and Lm7 million, which is a conservative figure. How many people will be employed when the supermarket is fully operational? We will employ around 130 people. |
