Retail Giant Carrefour Returns to Greece After 10-Year Absence

French retail giant Carrefour announced on Tuesday its return to Greece after 10 years — this time with a different partner and targeting small retailing through collaboration with local chains.

Carrefour, headquartered in Massy, France, is the eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue. It operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries stores, and convenience stores, which totals 12,225 stores in over 30 countries.

Carrefour was in partnership with Greek retail Marinopoulos Group, but sold its stake in 2012 in the early days of the debt crisis.

The Marinopoulos Group itself also went bankrupt a few years later as spending had dropped drastically due to cuts in salaries, pensions and VAT increases.

Carrefour Returns to Greece

As the Greek economy recovered, the French multinational explored the potential for a comeback. On Tuesday it announced a new partnership with Retail & More, a subsidiary of TeleUnicom, to relaunch the brand in Greece and offer Carrefour products to Greek customers and tourists.

The French multinational aims to open its first outlet before summer 2022, on Greece’s largest island of Crete.

“The Carrefour brand and products are well known to Greek customers and we are very excited to bring them back the best of Carrefour. TeleUnicom will give us the best platform to enter this market quickly and efficiently. By setting up in Greece in 2022, Carrefour International maintains its strong development dynamic in new regions,” stated
Patrick Lasfargues, Executive Director of International Partnerships at Carrefour.

Vasilis Stasinoulias, CEO of Retail & More stated: “We are very happy to relaunch the Carrefour brand in Greece. Greek consumers will have the opportunity to experience Carrefour’s ecosystem, which offers quality products and services accessible to all.”

Vasilis Papadopoulos, the CEO of TeleUnicom said that demand for quality products has increased in Greece. “We decided to create a new business unit for food distribution because demand was very strong to welcome Carrefour in Greece.”