Management

Hypervigilant

Hypermarkets

Carrefour comes to Romania

stocking high tech security

“We found it very easy

to install and integrate

the American Dynamics

equipment with the other

products,”

Roxana Tudosescu

When Carrefour, one of the largest

food retailers in the world, expanded

its presence of hypermarkets across

three continents, they hired security system integrator

UTI to establish loss prevention systems within their

UTI Systems

unique shopping environment. The security company

met the challenge, providing one of the most secure

hypermarkets, equipped with state-of-the-art video

surveillance equipment from American Dynamics™.

Created in 1959, Carrefour has grown from a single

supermarket in France’s Haute-Savoie region

to more than 11,080 stores in 29 countries.

Operations range from supermarkets

The problem affects merchants everywhere

stores and a variety of other outlets to

in Europe draining as much as 29 billion

convenience. But what Carrefour is known

euros annually from shopkeepers’ coffers.

for above all else is the hypermarket.

And it’s especially severe in Romania.

A hypermarket is, essentially, a super-sized

If Carrefour’s ambitious expansion into the

supermarket that typically stocks some

Eastern European nation was to succeed, the

70,000 items and has a sales floor as big

new hypermarkets would

as 20,000 square meters or approximately

require the toughest and

215,000 square feet. Carrefour introduced the

tightest security available.

concept to Europe in 1963, opening its first

Fabrice Besson, the

one in the south of Paris. The trend caught

security manager tasked

on and Carrefour hypermarkets sprang up

with protecting Carrefour’s

across the continent. As they increasingly

merchandise, personnel,

became part of daily life for many western

and patrons at all of the new stores throughout

Europeans, more stores opened in Latin

the...