Hungary: Tesco Set to Close 86 Tobacco Shops under New Rules in End-May

Source from:  All Hungary Media Group 05/12/2014

New regulations banning national tobacco shops from hypermarkets and other big stores from May 30 will cause retail chain Tesco to close 86 out of its 113 tobacco units, business daily Vilaggazdasag said on Friday.

Under the new rules, tobacco shops, which are a state monopoly, will not be allowed in stores with an area larger than 2,500 square metres or at petrol stations.

Tesco said it will do all it can to relocate the shops to smaller stores so that businesses will not have to shut down.

Fuels group Mol and supermaket chain Auchan are also set to lose shops due to the new regulation, the paper said.

Some 200 out of 6,300 tobacco shops operating nation-wide are located in hypermarkets, shopping centres and filling stations, generating about 17 percent of turnover from tobacco sales, the National Tobacco Sales Nonprofit company said. Enditem