Mercadona negotiates the sale of 30 supermarkets to the Israeli fund MDSR

Mercadona continues with its policy of divestment in part of its real estate portfolio, made up mostly of the supermarkets that it has been building in recent years throughout Spain.

The company chaired by Juan Roig is in negotiations to transfer up to 30 stores to the Israeli fund MDSR Investments, according to

Bloomberg

and confirms the company.

An operation similar to the one it closed last September, when it got rid of 27 stores that it sold to the US investment firm LCN Capital.

It is a new package within the process that Juan Roig himself confirmed in March last year of exchanging "brick for euros."

For this operation, it received 180 million euros, as confirmed by the company itself, after a process commissioned from the CBRE consultancy.

The supermarkets that Mercadona has been selling since it announced its intention to get rid of the ownership of part of its network have continued to be operated by the company under the formula of

 sale and leaseback

, that is, on a rental basis once the transfer is closed.

More information

• Mercadona loses annual quota for the first time and Lidl rises to the top 3 of the supermarkets in Spain

• Amazon Fresh arrives in Spain and puts more pressure on Mercadona, El Corte Inglés, Carrefour and Lidl

Mercadona has approached the sale of supermarkets with the aim of promoting the digital transformation process in which it is immersed and that will culminate in 2023. By then the company will have invested a total of 12,000 million euros.

This would not be the first operation that MDSR Investments has closed in the Spanish market.

In 2019, it acquired the ownership of 21 Eroski supermarkets from Patrizia.

Before, in 2017, it invested another 150 million in the acquisition of a portfolio of hypermarkets of Eroski itself and Carrefour.