By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 23 May:
Tunisian supermarket chain Monoprix announced last week that it plans to enter the Libyan market this year.
The . . .[restrict]Tunisian company is independent of the French store of the same name, but linked to it.
It is planning to open its first store within the next few months of 2012 and hopes to open a total of 10 stores by the end of 2013.
Monoprix is operating in Libya in conjunction with leading Libyan businessman Husni Bey and plans to open in Tripoli, Benghazi and Misrata.
It is not clear where its Tripoli store will be located, but one possible location that was being considered in 2010 for the first Tripoli Monoprix store was the (incomplete) retail section of the Hay al-Andulus located Sheraton-Four Points complex.
If the Monoprix store does succeed in opening a branch in Tripoli this year, it would be the first international food retail branch to open in Libya. It would also herald the wide opening of a sector that is still dominated by family-owned corner shops and minimarkets.
In 2010, Spinneys, the leading MENA region food retailer had announced that it would enter the Libyan market by the end of 2011, but the Arab Spring Revolutions meant that any such plans had to be put on hold.
It is worth noting that there were at least five shopping centers at one stage planned for construction by Turkish companies in Tripoli in 2010.
These include the Renaissance project at the Airport Road traffic lights and the Turkmall projects at the al-Jibs checkpoint of Swani Road and at Hay al-Andulus. Two of these projects were in an advanced stage of construction at the time of the outbreak of the 17 February Revolution.
At the time, Turkmall had advertised that the mall at ‘Andalus will be the first downtown shopping center of Libya’, and that its other (Oyia) mall would offer ‘A very wide range of international and local brands (that) will revolutionize the Libyan retail market’. [/restrict]
