Metro China

Metro China is the subsidiary of Metro Group from Germany. 

The latter set up its business operations in China since the year 1995 and collaborated with the well-known Jinjiang Group in China, to initiate Jinjiang & Metro Cash and Carry as well as when local food's sales begun to sunk.

Both Jinjiang and Metro Cash and Carry are the first joint venture with chain stores in China's big cities with the consent of the Chinese central government.

The products it puts forwards are:

• Meat (beef, pork and chicken)
• Fish (chilled sea fish, frozen aquatic)
• Imported food (cheese, milk, chocolate, biscuits and wine)
• Wine (french red wine, italian red wine, new world wine, wine column)
• Condiments (chicken powder series, soy sauce series, spices series)
• Cleaning products (comprising toiletries, hygiene products)
• Fresh food (salmon and meat)
• Catering products (wide options of  hotel catering products, including cleaning supplies, dining utensils etc )
• Office supplies (copy paper series, archive file series)

The company’s ‘private labels’ can be classified as follows:

• Aka/Fairline Ikea/Jinxin (daily food and non food like bowl, towel, files etc)
• Fine life (snacks like nuts and personal care)
• Fine dreaming (personal care products i.e sanitary paper)
• Metro chef (juices, oils, fusilli, including ambient products like canned tomatoes, sweet corn etc)
• Metro professional (non foods like bowl, pan etc and washing products)
• Sigma (office and stationery products)

Some multinational brands that were launched in their stores are (non-exhaustive list): Brauns, Vicks, sensodyne, bounty, nutrilon, aptamil etc...

Metro partnered with Alibaba in 2015 to promote e-commerce. Indeed, Metro associated itself with Tmall hence products reached China quickly and sales increased as well.

The company was recognised in the TOP-TALK “VVIP” by Alibaba, for developing Tmall.com into a trending lifestyle.

The Sino-Europe express on metro flagship stores can be accessed through the website: metro.tmall.hk.

Crazy Chinese ‘black friday’ which was held in november 2015 where the CEO of Metro AG Olaf, became salesman on that day provided informations to consumers through live chat with the witness of 500+ medias. On that day, Metro attracted 3.8 million visitors with only 99 SKUs.

In 2015, on the B2C sales market share account, Tmall achieved a 63.5% of sales.

Moreover, the company provides more than 2,000 types of condiments as well as 170 types of spices.

Its products are HACCP certified ensuring food safety and sanitation including safety of food in storage, transportation etc.

Also, they had set up the Star Farm Food Traceability System in the year 2007, which improved the China's food safety system.

Presently, Metro Cash and Carry China, a B2B wholesaler spans to 95 stores in 59 cities and has 8 million customers, with online and offline sales channels.

In the fiscal year 2017-2018, it had a turnover of €2.7 billion and employed more than 11 000 employees.

According to Bloomberg, the German food wholesaler Metro AG announced in 1st Feb 2019 that it wants to sell 80% of its Chinese subsidiary through local bids.