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German Metro, the world's third largest retailer after Wal-Mart and Carrefour, has invested 17 million U.S. dollars in a membership supermarket in Tianjin, a major port city in north China.
The store, which takes up more than 30,000 square meters in downtown Tianjin, is scheduled to start operation early next year.
Unlike most supermarkets that are frequented by individuals, the Metro store will solely target corporate consumers and small and medium-sized retailers, who will enjoy membership discounts on its over 20,000 categories of goods.
Metro predicts the annual turnover of this new outlet will surpass 700 million yuan (84 million U.S. dollars).
The store is expected to give new impetus to Tianjin's commercial sector and underpin Metro's business advancement in north China, said a company source.
Tianjin's over 1,700 supermarkets reported total sales of more than 10 billion yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2001 and 6.4 billion yuan (770 million U.S. dollars) in the first five months of this year.
(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2002)
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