Carrefour buys Bio C'Bon to accelerate organic food focus

PARIS (Reuters) - Carrefour <CARR.PA>, Europe's largest retailer, said on Monday it was buying the bankrupt specialist distributor Bio c'Bon for 60 million euros (£54 million), as part of plans to revamp its food range and focus more on organic food.

The Paris commercial court on Wednesday validated Carrefour's offer for Bio c'Bon, which had been put under court-ordered restructuring, as it included a commitment to preserve more than 1,000 employees, almost the entire workforce, the Carrefour statement said.

"Bio c'Bon has developed a very attractive specialised distribution network, combining a contemporary store concept and an offer adapted to urban centers in prime locations," it said.

The Bio c'Bon network of over 100 stores strengthens the specialised organic store division of Carrefour and follows the acquisition of So.bio in April 2019 and BioAzur in October 2020. The company has annual sales of 130 million euros.

Under its five-year plan to boost sales and profits, Carrefour, which is France’s top organic food retailer, targets 5 billion euros in organic food sales by 2022, compared with 2.3 billion euros in 2019 and 1.8 billion euros in 2018.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Bernadette Baum)