Mercadona has announced that its first store opening in Portugal will be in Porto, where it also intends to set up its headquarters in the country. The northern city is close to the retailer’s existing logistics centres in Galicia and Castilla y León.
The Spanish supermarket will initially invest €25m in its Portuguese expansion, creating 200 jobs. It has set up a subsidiary, Irmãdona, in Lisbon to oversee its Portuguese business, but stores will trade under the Mercadona banner.
Mercadona announced in June that it planned to open four stores in Portugal in 2019, firing the starting gun on its international expansion. It is currently recruiting 120 directors to oversee the expansion, who will be trained up over an 18-month period.
Mercadona is Spain’s biggest supermarket with a turnover of more than €20bn. It operates 1,590 stores throughout Spain employing more than 76,000 people.
