BauMax to open four new stores in Romania

Austrian building materials retailer BauMax will open four new stores in Romania this year, the company announced yesterday (Thurs).A new shop is going to open in Bucharest on 25 February at the new Sun Plaza shopping mall, which is being developed by Erste Group’s real estate subsidiary Sparkassen Immobilien AG.Other stores will open in the cities of Pitesti, Constanta and Timisoara, according to a Romanian Times report. The company, based in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, will then have 13 stores in the eastern European country. BauMax has been present in the country for three years.BauMax Romania reported a turnover of 90 million Euro in the first three quarters of 2009, an 8.5 per cent increase compared to the same period of the previous year. It had an overall 2008 turnover of 1.42 billion Euro in the eight European countries it has branches.BauMax boss Martin Essl recently also announced expansion plans for Turkey.Essl said three stories with an investment of around 20 million Euro each would be opened in the course of this year.The first one would open in Samsun on the Black Sea coast next month, followed by another in Izmit on the coast of the Sea of Marmora and a third in capital Istanbul, he said.