OREANDA-NEWS  On 17 November was announced, that during the solemn cornerstone laying ceremony on the cross roads of Saburova and Zakrevskogo streets Kyiv Deputy Mayor Mr. Zhuravskyi, First Deputy Head of Desnyanskyi District Administration Mr. Bulgakov and METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine Managing Director Axel Hluchy officially launched the construction of the fourth METRO Cash & Carry wholesale store in Kyiv.

The new METRO Cash & Carry wholesale center is planned to open in March 2009. The project envisages an investment of UAH 290 Mio into the construction and equipment of the store as well as into the purchasing of the land plot. Together with three operating stores on Moskovskyi Prospect, Kiltseva Road and Grygorenka Prospect the company’s total direct investment into the capital exceeds UAH 600 Mio. The company created 1800 new stable jobs in all four stores and in Head office in Kyiv.

The store is constructed by Solstroy as the general contractor together with 11 more local construction and design companies. Located on the 4.45 hectares land plot, the new 16.000 sq. m. METRO Cash & Carry wholesale trade center with 10.500 sq. m. of sales area will have 400 parking slots. The store will have an assortment of 28 000 articles, 90% of which are sourced from Ukrainian producers, distributors and importers. Totally the company cooperates with 1 400 suppliers.

The new METRO Cash & Carry store will offer its customers a unique for Ukraine Traders Show Room. Equipped as a regular food store, on the area of 60 sq. m. METRO Cash Carry professionals will train the company’s customers – traders how to run a store: starting from selecting attractive uniform for the salespeople to organizing a well-done promotional campaign.

“Successful operations of our three stores in Kyiv show that our wholesale concept is well perceived by our professional customers. This gives us confidence to grow further even despite the current financial crisis. We continue our development to be even closer to our customers”, − said Axel Hluchy.

Within 5 years of operations in Ukraine METRO Cash & Carry opened 21 wholesale stores: three in Kyiv, two in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa, one in Kharkiv, Lviv, Luhansk, Kryvyi Rih, Poltava, Vinnytsa, Zaporizhya, Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk and Makiyivka. Having invested into the Ukrainian economy  EUR  400 Mio METRO Cash & Carry created almost 7.000 new jobs for Ukrainians. In 2007 METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine achieved sales of EUR 818 Mio.