METRO Cash & Carry Opens its First Store in Simferopol Region

Simferopol region / Ukraine - November 18, 2008 – Today Mr. Abdulaev ,Deputy Head of Council of Ministers of Crimea, and Axel Hluchy, Managing Director of METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine, cut the symbolic ribbon at the opening ceremony of the first METRO Cash & Carry wholesale store in Crimea.

The new wholesale store is located on a 6 ha land plot at Evpatoriyska Street in Myrne, a village in the Simferopolskyi region, and created 300 new jobs for local citizens. On average a new METRO Cash & Carry outlet is an investment of around 20 million Euros.

“Opening our first wholesale store in Crimea’s capital is an important milestone in our expansion in Ukraine. I am confident that we will not only serve our professional customers from Simferopol region but also many HoReCa clients and traders along the entire Crimean coast from Evpatoria to Kerch – in particular during the summer season”, said Axel Hluchy, Managing Director of METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine.

The store was constructed by Skorpion-RP serving as general contractor together with three more local construction and design companies and spans an area of 14.200 square meters, offering a wide assortment of 28.000 food and non-food products under one roof at best possible wholesale prices. The store offers its customers a spacious parking for 370 cars of which 110 are roofed.

Sourcing over 90% of its food and non-food products from over 1.400 Ukrainian producers, distributors and importers METRO Cash & Carry intends to intensify its co-operation with local producers, especially in fresh categories. Currently  METRO co-operates with seven Crimean suppliers. Before the opening ceremony over 350 owners of local restaurants, hotels, bars, catering companies and traders visited the HoReCa and Traders Conference. The participants learnt about the METRO wholesale formula, loyalty programs and special services developed exclusively for HoReCa customers and traders. For them the company organized a product and wine tasting, in particular presenting the products sold under its own brands Aro and HoReCa Select.

Within 5 years of operations in Ukraine METRO Cash & Carry opened 21 wholesale stores: three in Kyiv, two in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa, one in Kharkiv, Lviv, Luhansk, Kryvyi Rih, Poltava, Vinnytsa, Zaporizhya, Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk and Makiyivka. Having invested into the Ukrainian economy EUR 400 Mio. METRO Cash & Carry created 7 000 new jobs for Ukrainians.

_______________
METRO Cash & Carry is a sales division of the METRO Group, one of the most important international retailing and trading companies. In 2007, the group reached sales of € 64.3 billion. The company has a headcount of more than 280,000 employees and operates about 2,500 outlets in 31 countries. The operating business is performed by the sales brands which operate independently in the market: Metro/Makro Cash & Carry, Real hypermarkets, Media Markt and Saturn – market leader in consumer electronics centers in Europe, and Galeria Kaufhof department stores. More information at: www.metrogroup.de.

Contact:
Tetyana Babenko
Head of Corporate Communications department
METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine 
Tel. 8 (044) 492-11-80
E-mail: pr@metro.ua