Colombia: Jeronimo Martins to invest €500 million

Jeronimo Martins, the Portuguese supermarket group, has announced the investment of €500 million ($560 million) in Colombia, where it expects to open 1,000 stores by 2020.

According to a report in Economico, Jeronimo Martins chairman Pedro Soares dos Santos, speaking at a gathering of journalists, said as a “source of innovation", Colombia was crucial to the group since the demographic was younger than in the country than in the firm's principal markets of Portugal and Poland".

"Here [in Colombia] more than half of the population is under 25 years old and they live in the digital age”, Mr dos Santos said.

Within four years, Jeronimo Martins said that it expected its network in Colombia to surpass that of Portugal, where the group’s Pingo Doce chain currently has 399 stores. Currently Colombia’s largest supermarket chain is Ara, with 149 stores.

Source: Economico