OREANDA-NEWS. On November 13, acting City Mayor Torgun, Governor Matchuk and Axel Hluchy, Managing Director of METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine, in the presence of 300 invited guests cut the symbolic ribbon at the opening ceremony of the new METRO Cash & Carry wholesale store in the Makarova Street, Rovno, METRO's press service announced.

With this newly opened store located on a land plot of 4.7 hectares the company celebrates its last of 5 planned store openings in 2007. Total investment into land, construction and fitting of the store amounts to 120 UAH Mln. The store employs 350 local residents. With its store opening in Rovno, METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine operates now a network of 18 stores in 14 cities of Ukraine. Since the market entry in 2003, the company has invested over euro 330 Mln into the Ukrainian economy and created more than 6 100 jobs.

The store covers an area of 12 000 square meters, of which 7 500 are allocated to the trade floor, and offers its professional customers an efficient purchasing solution uniting under one roof an assortment of over 28 000 food and non-food products at favorable wholesale prices. Over 90% of its food and non-food products are currently sourced from over 1 400 Ukrainian producers, distributors and importers.

"By opening our store in Rovne we extend our presence in western Ukraine to four stores. We bring our successful wholesale concept closer to our professional customers from the Rovne region who now will be able to enjoy all the benefits of our business formula," said Axel Hluchy.

Before the opening ceremony, the owners of local restaurants, hotels, bars and catering companies visited a separate HoReCa conference. The participants learnt about the METRO wholesale formula, loyalty programs and many special services developed exclusively for HoReCa customers.

Within 4 years of operations in Ukraine METRO Cash & Carry opened 17 wholesale stores: three in Kiev, two in Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk, one in Kharkov, Odesa, Lvov, Luhansk, Kryvoi Rog, Poltava, Vinnytsa, Zaporozhie, Chernovtsy, and Nilolayev. Having invested into the Ukrainian economy euro 317 Mln, METRO Cash & Carry has created over 6 100 new jobs for Ukrainians.

METRO Cash & Carry is an international leader in self-service wholesale for professionals operating more than 600 stores in 29 countries. With over 92,000 employees worldwide the company earned euro 29.9 Bn in sales in 2006. METRO Cash & Carry is a sales division of METRO Group, one of the largest retailers worldwide. METRO Group has annual sales of euro 60 billion and includes the following divisions: METRO/Makro Cash & Carry, Real hypermarkets, Extra supermarkets, Media Markt and Saturn - the leading costumer electronics centers in Europe, and the department stores of Galeria Kaufhof.