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Yet more competition in the Moroccan grocery retail environment

By our African Marketing Confederation News Team | 2024

Système U opens its first hypermarket to complement lineup of smaller U Express stores. Carrefour and others already strong in the market.

The grocery retail space in Morocco is becoming increasingly competitive, with the recent opening of the first Hyper U hypermarket in the country.

Hyper U is a sub-brand of Système U, a French-based retail cooperative which entered Morocco in 2019 with its smaller U Express format.

Fresh food at the new Hyper U in Casablanca.

Photo: El Mehdi Bourassi, LinkedIn

The first hypermarket is located on the outskirts of Casablanca, at Sidi Bernoussi. The store has a floor space of 5,000 square metres and is situated on a major transport route between Casablanca and Mohammedia, a port city on the west coast.

“This new Hyper U has a strong focus on budget consumers, with a lot of in-store media promoting low prices. It also has large fresh meat, fish and bakery sections and is also designed to appeal to higher-end consumers,” comments Trendtype, the London-based emerging markets consultancy.

Système U already has a presence in the Francophone African countries, including Mauritius, Senegal, Madagascar and Cameroon.

Exploiting the financial problems facing the Casino supermarket chain

“In Morocco and across West Africa it is looking to exploit the financial problems facing Casino by either taking over existing Casino stores, or with new store openings to compete against them,” says Trendtype.

Casino is a Franch-based supermarket group. A decade ago, it was expanding its presence in North Africa and the Middle East, but is now retreating from many of these markets.

Supermarket retailing in Morocco is increasingly competitive. Kazyon, the Egyptian-based discount grocery retailer, opened its first outlet in the country in October 2023 and aims to have 600 stores by the end of 2027.

Auchan, another French supermarket group, has opened in Algeria and is eyeing other nations in the Maghreb region, including Morocco.

BIM, a Turkish discounter, has a Moroccan network of more than 600 neighbourhood stores. It is competing with Carrefour, which last year unveiled a new franchise programme that will grow the national footprint of its smaller convenience stores under the Carrefour Express brand.

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