Carrefour to sell more SME products

News & Events - By administrator on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - 00:00

Carrefour Malaysia wants to carry more goods made by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at its stores, in line with the government's move in promoting SME products.

Currently, SME products make up 9.2 per cent of its total goods and it plans to raise this to 15 per cent by 2011.

The French retailer now has 20 stores nationwide.

"We have a lot of frozen foods and drinks from the SMEs especially those from the halal industry," marketing and communications director Low Ngai Yuen said after the launch of its 20th store in Kota Damansara in Selangor yesterday.

She declined to reveal the investment made for the new store or how many stores the company plans to open this year.

"We are going to open one more Carrefour in Negri Sembilan this Thursday, making it the 21th store by the end of this week," Low said.

Carrefour has also introduced several Malaysian- made products to its stores in France.

"We want to help the government achieve the 30 percent target of having SME produce in our hypermarkets and have done our part by not charging for rebate and listing fee. This means they can put their products on our shelves for free," Low said.

Although Carrefour is the pioneer developer of the hypermarket concept in Malaysia, it is third in terms of number of stores. Giant and Tesco come in first and second respectively.

However, Carrefour is one of the world's most successful hypermarket chains with more than 15,000 stores in 31 countries.

NST, Feb. 3, 2010