With 15 additional stores, Carrefour fails to match its best year sales

French group Carrefour, the biggest hypermarket operator on the Romanian market, which also holds Carrefour Market supermarkets, reported 1.13 billion euros in turnover in Romania in 2010, down 0.4% against the previous year, according to the company's financial report.

With 15 more stores than in 2008, which entailed investments of around 60 million euros according to ZF calculations, Carrefour failed again in 2010 to match its 2008 sales.

2010 is thus the second year since Carrefour's market entry in 2001, when overall sales are on a downward path, though at a slower rate, from 4.7% in 2009 against 2008, to just 0.4% last year.

Despite facing a consumption decline in Romania, the French have continued to come up with money to expand stores on this market, especially on the supermarket segment, with the group ending last year with 55 stores, 15 more than in 2008 (2 hypermarkets and 13 supermarkets).

So, if an average investment in a supermarket amounts to 1.5 million euros and one in a hypermarket stands at 20 million euros, Carrefour's investments in the 15 new stores stand at 60 million euros in the past two years, according to ZF estimates.