Other interested parties in the race
Kaufland wants to rent abandoned Real branches
March 27, 2024, 7:28 p.m
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Real becomes Kaufland: The company has already taken over numerous branches of the insolvent department store chain. Now there is also interest in the locations used by Real until recently. But two other supermarket chains also want to take over the closed branches.
The food retailer Kaufland plans to secure almost half of the insolvent Mein Real department store chain’s stores, which were closed forever last weekend, in order to open its own branches there. Up to 23 of the 49 discontinued locations are to be integrated into the Kaufland branch network, 13 of them by the end of February 2025. This was said by a spokeswoman for the company. Kaufland would then move into the buildings of the former Real branches as a new tenant.
Negotiations with the landlords were already underway. “We look at each individual location to decide how extensively renovations need to be made before the reopening,” said the spokeswoman. In some branches it is possible to reopen after a few days, in others the renovation will take months.
There are currently no plans to take on employees from the recently closed Real stores. “As we cannot currently predict when we will operate a Kaufland branch at the respective locations, we cannot currently make any statements about Real employees,” the company said.
Rewe is also interested
In recent years, the retail giant Kaufland says it has taken over more than 100 former Real stores with more than 10,000 employees. It was said that the sales area had increased by more than half a million square meters. Kaufland has more than 770 branches nationwide and employs around 90,000 people.
The management of Real expects that the “three large retail groups Rewe, Kaufland and Edeka” will move into the buildings of the recently closed branches in many places. The Rewe Group recently confirmed its interest in this. It is certainly conceivable to examine additional markets from the remaining locations, “if the general conditions are right,” said a spokesman. Rewe has taken over 14 Real stores in the past few years. Edeka did not want to comment.
The hypermarket chain Mein Real filed an application to open insolvency proceedings under self-administration at the end of September 2023. According to Real GmbH, 2,500 employees were affected by the closures of the last 49 stores last weekend.