Dia Nears Closure In France

The Spanish discount supermarket Dia plans to end, or at least greatly reduce, its trading in France. French retail publication Libre Service Actualités reported today that great strides have been made towards pulling out of their French operation.    At present Dia, the third most prominent hard-discount retailer in the world, in France has 900 outlets and employs 7,500 people. They have been reticent to express what exactly how many of their distressed stores they are to close, but Leader Price and Carrefour, the two primary competitors of Dia's in France, will be watching the properties involved keenly, as they almost definitely will have scope for expansion following closures.    The secretary of the works council for Dia in France, Evelyne Beaux, spoke un ambiguously about the future of the enterprise:    "They just don't want Dia France anymore. We are heading towards a closure."   Before the end of December 2013, Dia's French arm was under the wing of Carrefour, but the results published at this time marked the beginning of a slippery fiscal slope for the company, with a drop in gross sales of 10.9% (€2.18 billion); the number of outlets operated fell in accordance with this from 888 to 865.    Dia currently operates in six countries — Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, China, and France.   © 2014 - European Supermarket Magazine by Peter Donnelly To sign up to ESM’s weekly e-zine newsletter, send an email with the subject: ‘Subscribe ESM news’ to editorial@esmmagazine.com