Walmart back to open stores in 2015

The President of Walmart in Brazil, Guilherme Loureiro, said yesterday that the company should return to open stores in the country in 2015. The latest network openings, in the process of restructuring, were last year-when were opened 22 stores and reported total investment of r $ 1 billion. In 2014, the company made no opening of point and is renovating approximately 40 stores.
For comparison, the Cencosud made an opening until June in Brazil and Grupo Pão de Açúcar and Carrefour, in that order, are competing networks that should open up more units in the year. "We have some stores [open], but few in 2015," he said. Opening models will be in the formats of supermarkets and hypermarkets. The company has 174 stores with the flag every day, being three supermarkets (traditional model, with an average of 2 000 m2) and a hypermarket with this flag. In total, Walmart has 544 points in the country.
"Our focus is on completing this process of changes in the company, so we think of organic expansion. We did a lot, but there's nothing we can do and we are not ready yet for a rapid resumption of open points ", said during the annual Convention of the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets (Open), in Atibaia (SP).
He ruled out the opening of Walmart Express in Brazil, model of the network neighborhood stores in the United States.
Walmart goes through a phase of reorganisation of operations in the country, with integration of purchased networking structures at the beginning of the year 2000 (Bompreço and Sonae) and consolidation of the model "every day low price", which is to offer consumers products with more stable prices, and smaller than the market, according to the company, no offers and promotions.
On account of this current phase, the company reviewed the priorities and intends to finish the stage bigger adjustments to then accelerate organic expansion.
About this process of internal changes, which involves changing of management systems of the stores acquired of Bompreço and Sonae, command of the network said that the unification of these systems must be completed, in the southern region, until the end of the year, as already anticipated the value.
There are about 160 stores Walmart group in the South and 120 are operating under the same platform, missing 40 units to do the migration. In the Northeast, lack integrate the 220 Group stores, what should be done until the end of next year. Therefore, it is possible that the systems settings in company finish in early 2016.