ALDI May Be Leaving Greece

The German supermarket chain Aldi may be withdrawing from Greece, nearly twenty months after the operation of its first store in domestic market.
The company’s decision to suspend the its expansion program in the Greek market should be considered certain, information say, and it will exit the Greek market by the end of the year as the project was deemed as “not sustainable”.
Still, so far there is no official confirmation from Aldi Hellas.
Since November 2008, when Aldi, one of the largest discounters in the retail world, began operations in Greece, it has created a network of 36 branches and employs about 700 workers.
In the autumn of 2009 it opened its first stores in Athens (Likovrisi, Taurus, Piraeus and Patision), and in 2010 it was planning to open a total of 20 new stores, mainly in the capital, and a second logistics center in Patras.
The German chain, considered the first that adopted the model of discount stores, started as a small grocery store in a suburb of Essen in Germany under the name ALbrecht DIscount (ALDI). It has currently presence in 18 countries and at corporate level it is divided into two entities, Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud. Its branches exceed 8000.