Fruit of a partnership between the Chong-Fah-Shen and Excellence groups of Pascal Thiaw-Kine, the reopening at the beginning of October of the Casernes hypermarket installs the E.Leclerc brand in Saint-Pierre.
The sad spectacle of an almost urban wasteland that the old Auchan was beginning to become is over., spent at the beginning of 2019 for a few months under a “Centre commercial Géant Les Casernes” brand before its definitive closure in June following the judicial liquidation of the management company. The handful of points of sale in the gallery which have maintained a semblance of life there for two years are therefore seeing the end of the tunnel with the return of the crowds.
With a sales area of more than 5,500 m2, the new Casernes Hypermarket is the eighteenth store bearing the E.Leclerc brand in Reunion, and the first in Saint-Pierre. In addition to the traditional argument on prices, the brand focuses on recruiting 235 employees for the new commercial structure. Nearly half come from Saint-Pierre. A legitimate development in view of the trauma caused by the closure of the hypermarket by putting 104 people on the job.
A strategic investment
Until this opening, the E sign. Leclerc was only present in Saint-Pierre through the E.Leclerc Express of Ligne des 400. Pour E.Leclerc, the investment is therefore strategic in a population area dominated by, in hyper format, the Carrefour brand with its two locations at Zac Canabady and Pointe du Diable at Ravine Blanche. The two groups operating the Leclerc brand in Reunion, the Excellence group of Pascal Thiaw-Kine and the Chong-Fah-Shen group chaired by Joseph Chong-Fah-Shen, are once again associated in this operation. This took place as part of the restructuring of the commercial landscape following the acquisition of the Vindémia group by GBH. Between transfers on one side, acquisitions of the other, the Barracks commercial site, of which the Thien Ah Koon group owns the walls, finally fell to the E.Leclerc brand which had positioned itself very early on for this takeover. Note that the relaunch of the shopping mall depends, she, still from the Thien-Ah-Koon family.
