Central Group to invest US$30 million on Big C Vietnam store revamps

Thai retail giant Central Group is planning to expand its Big C Vietnam supermarket business.

Plans for the network include new shopping malls and upgrades to existing stores to convert them to high-end retail centres, according to a report in VNExpress. Thirteen of the chain’s 34 Big C Vietnam supermarkets will be converted and enlarged by 2021 at a cost of US$30 million.

Meanwhile, Central Group has halted its garments orders from local suppliers for the time being.

“To restructure the group’s garment sector in the Vietnam market,” read a notice from the Thai holding firm to local suppliers, “we have decided to suspend the procurement of garments starting from July 2019”.

After seeing delegations from the affected firms, the firm released a second statement that read, “Big C Vietnam is in the process of reviewing together with over 200 garment suppliers to identify products of the highest quality not only for the domestic market but also for export. The suspension of orders is only temporary and we have not [pulled out] of the garment sector in Vietnam.”

Central Group, which bought the Big C chain from French Casino Group in 2016 for more than US$1 billion, has promised to resume buying Vietnamese garments after a period of a fortnight.

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