Metro Cash & Carry opens fourth wholesale center in Hamburg, Germany

Metro Cash & Carry is continuing to expand its presence in Germany. The company, which has been operating in Hamburg for over 40 years, is opening its fourth wholesale center in Hamburg, at Altona, following stores in Niendorf, Rahlstedt and Harburg. Commercial customers will find a broad range of products in a sales space occupying around 13,500 square meters. Manager Ulrich Both and his 260 employees provide both advice and service.

The area which previously served as a storage depot for packages and letters now has the bustling atmosphere of a wholesale market. The former Hamburg-Altona post office building was totally gutted over the last few months. It now provides space for Metro Cash & Carry's unique merchandising concept. "Our new Altona site offers our customers convenient shopping in a central location," says Manager Ulrich Both. The wholesale center is right next to the B4 and can be reached from the center of Hamburg or the harbor within a few minutes.

Choice specialties
The product assortment encompasses 30,000 non-food items and 20,000 food items. The wholesale market's specialties include the international specialty wine section which, among other things, has one of only three humidors nationwide. It stores extraordinary wines, champagnes and liqueurs at constant temperature and moisture levels.A further highlight is the 350-square-meter fresh fish department, with its large tanks of live fish and lobsters. With these exclusive product lines, Metro Cash & Carry is appealing to the upscale demands of its commercial customers, which mainly include hotels, restaurants and caterers.

International customer consultants
New customers can quickly obtain help to find their way around the wholesale center from the service staff located at the highly visible information booth near the entrance. The Hamburg-Altona store employs a total of almost 260 people; three-fourths were new hires for this location. Some of the sales and consulting staff speak a second language, in addition to German. According to Ulrich Both, "Right here in Hamburg-Altona, we get many customers who are immigrants. So that we can do our best to serve them, we have many customer managers at our wholesale center who were born in Turkey and Greece."

More environmentally friendly commercial refrigeration system
In addition, Metro Cash & Carry is installing an innovative commercial refrigeration system for the first time. This system, which provides constant temperatures throughout the wholesale center's food section, uses carbon dioxide as the cooling agent. In comparison to conventional systems which use cooling agents that contain fluorinated hydrocarbons, it causes far less climate damage. In addition, the heat loss from the commercial cooling system is transferred to the heating circuit, saving energy costs and benefiting the environment. Metro Cash & Carry has already successfully implemented this approach at other locations.

Contact
Lars Bank
Metro Cash & Carry Deutschland
Corporate Communications
Telephon: +49 (211) 6886-1341
E-Mail: lars.bank@metro-cc.de