Carrefour of France is undaunted by local retailers'
rising opposition to hypermarkets, saying it will
continue to add more sites in Thailand where it sees
ample room for growth.

The company planned to add two new stores each
year, each one costing 400-600 million baht and
creating 300500 jobs, said Pascal Billaud, managing
director of Cencar Co, the local subsidiary of
Carrefour.

He said there was ``huge'' potential to expand the retail business in Thailand,
especially for stores with 2,500 square metres or more.

There was room for 1,000 such stores nationwide, compared with about 200 at
present, said Mr Billaud.

Carrefour yesterday opened its 17th store in Samrong, Samut Prakan. The new outlet
covers 9,800 square metres, cost 700 million baht to build and employs 500 people.

Despite opposition from smaller retailers, Carrefour sees Thailand as the most
attractive country in Southeast Asia because of the Thai government's support of
foreign investment,

The country also contained the regional head offices of many businesses and was a
major food exporter, Mr Billaud said.

He said that he was not worried about moves by the government that might restrict
discount stores' operations.

``The market environment would be positive and fair as long as everything is
transparent and everybody in the business follows the rules,'' he said.

``Carrefour carries out thorough study on each location before we build a store.
That's why the company can only open two outlets each year.''

Asked about a plan by the Thai government to enforce labelling regulations to
ensure that house brands looked sufficiently different from other suppliers' brands,
Mr Billaud said the company would not change anything about its house-brand
products.

He said Carrefour's house-brand products were already quite different from those of
the top two leaders in the market. Labels on some products had to meet Food and
Drug Administration regulations and there were limits on packaging designs on some
products.

``If we receive complaints from suppliers, we are ready to talk with them. At Carrefour
in Malaysia, we once negotiated with Nestle [about a milk product] and changed
some product colours,'' Mr Billaud said.

He said the first-half performance of Carrefour in Thailand was positive, and the
company expected 25% year-on-year sales growth to 18 billon baht this year, despite
opening only two new outlets.

He attributed the healthy sales increase to pricing strategy, World Cup promotions
for some products, and attractive hire-purchase terms for goods such as appliances.