An emerging multinational grocery store, Shop N Save has sounded out its intentions to embark on an aggressive expansion drive in a bid to establish the company as the leader in the supermarket sector.
This follows the opening of Shop N Save’s new food and staples outlet in Adenta, a suburb of Accra, which is by far the company’s biggest retail outlet in the country.
Shop N Save now operates three stores in Ghana with two in Accra and one in Takoradi but the Adenta outlet is the first the company has built from the ground up.
The General Manager of Shop N Save, Mike Chambers said the company plans to have the biggest supermarket chain in Ghana by 2020 at the latest to serve the shopping needs of the middle income and rising middle income population groups.
“We intend to expand quite fast in the next three to four years. We will have more stores than any of the supermarket chains in the country,” he said.
According to Mr. Chmabers, the company invested about US$3 million in putting up the Adenta store and hinted of the imminent opening of two more stores by the end of this year.
He said the decision to open the Adenta branch is to meet the needs of an underserved community with a population of about 341,000.
The company is hopeful that its location and introduction of more traditional foods in its stores will attract shoppers in the Adenta Municipality and those in the Ga West area including Madina, Ashaley Botwe, Abokobi, Haatso among others.
Shop N Save is a supermarket joint venture with the Finatrade Group founders operating under the umbrella of West Africa Retail Chain Limited, a start-up venture founded out of private equity investment.
In 2014, UK-based alternative asset management company Duet Group announced that it has invested growth capital of US$50 million in Ghana, buying a majority stake in Shop N Save and food manufacturing firm GNFoods.
The funds, Duet said was to be deployed towards launching new food retail outlets, increasing manufacturing capacity and supporting the sales and marketing efforts of the food companies.
Source: B&FT Online