OREANDA-NEWS. Lenta, (LSE, MOEX: LNTA) one of the largest retail chains in Russia, is pleased to announce the opening of a hypermarket in Novorossiysk, its second store in the city.

The store, which is located in 1 Grigorieva Street in the 14th district of Novorossiysk, has selling space of 7,000 sq.m., a total area of 12,000 sq.m., and customers will be served by 280 Novorossiysk residents who have been employed at the new hypermarket. The store will offer high levels of convenience thanks to its high capacity 550-car customer car park as well as a fast and seamless checkout operation with 40 cash registers.

The layout of the store will differ slightly to the standard Lenta format as it will be housed on two floors, with underground parking and shopping space on the upper level. The store will also provide customers with plenty of choice through an expanded product assortment of 24,000 SKUs, which includes own-brand and fresh articles as well as local produce, alongside a standardised federal assortment. The hypermarket is open 24 hours a day.

Two Lenta stores now serve Novorossiysk, which has a population of 242,000 inhabitants. The latest store is fully owned by Lenta.

Lenta's first store in Novorossiysk at 7 Lenina Street, Tsemdolina village was opened in 2009 and at the time the store was the first 24 hour retail operation in Novorossiysk. The store serves 6,000 - 6,500 customers daily and as of February 2014, had a total of 128,600 loyalty card holders, up 35% year on year.

Lenta is one of the largest retail chains in Russia and the country's second largest hypermarket chain (in terms of 2013 sales). The Company was founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg. Lenta operates 78 hypermarkets in 45 cities across Russia and 10 supermarkets in Moscow and the Moscow region, with a total of approximately 515,000 sq.m. of selling space. The average Lenta hypermarket store has selling space of approximately 6,400 sq.m. The Company operates four distribution centres that service hypermarkets and one dedicated to supermarkets.

The Company's price-led hypermarket formats are differentiated in terms of their promotion and pricing strategies as well as their local product assortment. The Company employed approximately 27,800 people as of 31 December 2013.

The Company's management team boasts a mix of local knowledge and international expertise coupled with extensive operational experience in Russia. Lenta's largest shareholders include TPG Capital, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and VTB Capital Private Equity, all of whom are committed to maintaining high standards of corporate governance. Lenta is listed on the London Stock Exchange and on the Moscow Exchange and trades under the ticker: 'LNTA'.