EUR Food Retail

active

IFC is supporting (i) expansion of modern food retail in several Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia) by helping Schwarz Group to launch its operations in these new markets; and (ii) the Group’s existing retail operations in Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia (the Project). The proposed IFC investment is an up to US$250 million equivalent in EUR A loan (the IFC Loan) for IFC’s own account to SG Finance & Treasury Limited (SG Finance & Treasury), the Irish treasury subsidiary of the Group and IFC’s existing client.  Schwarz Group is a leading European food retailer with operations spread over 31 European countries and the United States. With its headquarters in Germany, the Group employs about 590,000 employees and operates more than 13,700 stores. Schwarz Group consists of 5 organizational divisions: Kaufland, Lidl (retail divisions), Schwarz Produktion (food and beverage manufacturing), PreZero (environmental services and recycling) and Schwarz Digits (IT and digital services such as cloud business and cyber security). Retail divisions have two store formats that operate as independent business lines: Lidl discount stores (about 12,200 stores) and Kaufland discounting hypermarket formats (about 1,500 stores). Both formats are among the leading operations in their respective segments in Europe and serve around 6.5 billion customers per year.