OREANDA-NEWS. On 21 July 2008 was announced, that Ivano-Frankivsk, Donetsk, Luhansk – yesterday METRO Cash & Carry opened its 20th wholesale store in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.  In the meantime two METRO Cash & Carry stores in Donetsk and one in Luhansk welcomed their customers with the remodeled trade area and new departments. With this project the total investment of the company into the economy of Ukraine reached EUR 380 Mio. and the number of new jobs 7 000.

Opening its 20th store in Ivano-Frankivsk the company widened its expansion to 15 cities. The new store offers a wide assortment of 28.000 food and non-food products on a net sales area of 9.000 square meters. The store offers its customers prolonged working hours and a spacious parking for 267 cars, of which 80 are roofed. Opening this store METRO Cash & Carry brings into the region UAH 160 Mio. (EUR 21 Mio.) of direct investment and 300 new jobs for local citizens.

Remodeled METRO Cash & Carry stores in Donetsk and Luhansk changed their trade floor planning in nonfood area and added new departments. Serving professional customers from HoReCa and trade sector the 7.000 – 9.000 sq. m. METRO Cash & Carry stores each enlarged the area of its Household, Office Equipment, Consumer Electronics and Seasonal Goods departments by over 700 sq. m.

The Humidor department was opened in METRO Cash & Carry store on Leninskyi Ave., Donetsk. The Humidor offers over 140 unique wines up to UAH 5.000 per bottle imported from France, Italy and the New World and of over 61 types of cigars from Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua and Honduras. All products belong to premium class and are offered at price 10% lower than in specialized stores.

The room with premium class meat products was introduced in METRO wholesale centre on Vzlotna Str., Donetsk. The room offers an assortment of over 120 meat products sourced both from Ukrainian producers as well as from Spain, Hungary and Italy.

The new shop-in-shop concept divides the nonfood area of all three stores into thematic worlds. The inside shop effect is achieved through the combination of high and low racks.

In Household the assortment of glasses has increased by almost 50%. The offer of professional high quality dishes has grown up to 30%. The office equipment department offers a wider range of office furniture, technical equipment and stationary assortment. Consumer electronics with an extended selection of TV-sets, audio technique, DVDs and press are meeting customers with an optimized assortment and a new modern design.

The new professional entry lets owners of METRO Cash & Carry Gold Card directly into the food close to the Gold Card cash desks where top Gold Card customers can enjoy a range of special services.

"We are constantly working on improvement of our operations to make the purchasing process in our stores more comfortable. First of all we try to be closer to our customers by entering new cities. And remodeled trade floor helps our customers to speed up the purchasing process. We also widen the assortment introducing premium class products and making the trade area more organized", - said Maksym Gatsus, Operations director METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine.

The first remodeling happened in Poznyaky store, Kyiv last year. Then METRO Cash & Carry on Petrivka, Kyiv went through remodeling process. Three new departments came live: a Humidor, room with premium class products and tasting kitchen. Odessa wholesale store (opened in 2003) is the first to complete the remodeling this year. The rest of the stores will undergo similar changes until the end of this year. All new stores open with the new layout. METRO Cash & Carry plans to invest more than UAH 40 Mio. into the remodeling.

Within 5 years of operations in Ukraine METRO Cash & Carry opened 20 wholesale stores: three in Kyiv, two in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa, one in Kharkiv, Lviv, Luhansk, Kryvyi Rih, Poltava, Vinnytsa, Zaporizhya, Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv, Rivne and Ivano-Frankivsk. Having invested into the Ukrainian economy EUR 380 Mio. METRO Cash & Carry created close to 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.