| Development strategy |
A policy of sustainable growth
An organisation based on business sector
Groupe Auchan, an unlisted family company, is implementing a policy of progressive and controlled international growth, and is concentrating its investments on priority development areas: Western Europe, central and Eastern Europe and Asia.
Auchan is present in 13 countries and region* and develops its activities through four core businesses: hypermarkets, supermarkets, real estate and banking.
* France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Dubai (in partnership).
The preferred mode of development: organic growth
Organic growth is Groupe Auchan’s preferred and historical mode of development. Nevertheless, over the course of its development, the group has not hesitated to seize opportunities for major external growth: acquisition of Docks de France and the Spanish and Portuguese activities of Pão de Açúcar in 1996, partnership with RT Mart in China and Taiwan in 2001, acquisition of the totality of Italy’s Groupe Rinascente’s food business in 2004, agreement with Enka Group in Russia in 2007, agreement with Nakheel Group in Dubai in 2008...
About 1,200 consolidated stores…
This growth strategy allows the company to occupy solid positions in the countries in which it is present.
The hypermarket activity, which implements a policy of regular growth, has about 500 stores,
in 13 countries; 47 of which were opened in 2009. The Auchan chain has entered during the year in Dubai.
With over to 2,200 outlets, of which over 700 are fully owned, the supermarket activity is present in 5 countries (France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia). The supermarket division is developing franchise activities in three countries: France, Italy and Spain.
Banque Accord and Immochan, the banking and real-estate subsidiaries of Groupe Auchan, provide support for this development and are progressively extending their presence in the countries where Auchan is located.
Exploiting the complementarity nature of its retailing format, the Group is also constantly seeking sales innovations and is testing new concepts: onlines sales, distance shopping...
In France, the furniture and decoration chain Alinéa has 22 stores.