Carrefour to close stores in Italy, cut 500 jobs | Progresiv

French supermarket chain Carrefour has informed unions of its plan to restructure operations in Italy, with the closure of three stores and the loss of 500 jobs.

Two stores will be closed in the Piedmont region (Borgomanero and Trofarello) and one in Campania (Pontecagnano).

According to the joint statement made by the Filcams, Fisascat and UILTuCS unions, Carrefour’s arguments for the restructuring plans have highlighted significant issues regarding business trends, such as sales, cost of labour and profitability, adding that hypermarkets are particularly penalized.

Filcams points out that the strategy of the French group in Italy has been based on the 24-hour opening of stores, without resulting in a significant growth in sales.

For its part, Carrefour said that the plan will involve the reorganisation of 32 hypermarkets, adding that the changes are "motivated by the ongoing difficulties and the sales decline in the hypermarkets format in Italy”.

For 2016, Carrefour posted a 3.3% increase in full-year sales to 85.7 billion euros, in its fifth consecutive year of like-for-like sales growth. The retailer reported total sales in Italy of 5.48 billion euros in 2016, down by 1% year-on-year, but there was an organic growth of 0.9% (excluding petrol and calendar variations). Like-for-like sales (excluding petrol and calendar variations) were up 2.1%. (www.esmmagazine.com)