Financially-beleaguered Japanese retailer Daiei will consolidate its supermarket operations to cut costs and enable it to streamline its procurement systems. Daiei, which has been struggling to recover from its huge debts, is under the supervision of the semi-private Industrial Revitalization Corp. of Japan.
Daiei operates food supermarkets under its own name, but five subsidiaries own supermarket chains separately. The integration plan will cover 104 stores (about half of Daiei's direct run food supermarkets), and 140 locations controlled by the five subsidiaries. The stores have already begun joint purchases of processed food, snacks and milk. The target is to jointly procure most fresh food items by February next year.