French retail group Casino want to acquire Teract, a group owning several gardening formats and organic shops such as Jardiland and Boulangerie Louise.
Towards new markets
Casino wants to remove French retail group Teract from the stock market: the supermarket group confirmed to be in exploratory negotiations with the owner of several garden centres and fresh food formats, after rumours of a takeover had been circulating for a while. For Casino, it would be its first steps into physical non-food retail, even though the group is already active in non-food e-commerce with Sarenza and Cdiscount.
Casino would like to take over Teract’s retail activities in France and bring them under its own control. These include the garden and pet chains Jardiland, Gamm vert, Jardineries du Terroir and Delbard, as well as the regional and fresh food formulas Frais d’Ici, Bio&Co and Boulangerie Louise. The Belgian shops of Jardiland and Boulangerie Louise would not be part of the takeover.
Teract itself is still a very young company, being formed less than a year ago by the merger of investment vehicle 2MX Organic and InVivo Retail. InVivo is one of Europe’s largest agricultural and agri-food groups. Since the merger, Teract has been listed on the Paris stock exchange, although InVivo still holds 76 % of the shares.