Coop Eesti to become a billion-euro company after acquiring the Prisma chain
Coop Eesti has bought Prisma's stores and next year will become Estonia's first food chain with a turnover of one billion euros. The first to close, on September 9, is Roo Prisma in Tallinn. Prisma is cutting 10% of its staff.
Coop Eesti will reach a turnover of one billion euros next year thanks to the acquisition of Prisma's Estonian stores. No other Estonian retail chain has crossed this threshold so far.
The first store will change its signage as early as this week. The Tallinn Roo Prisma supermarket will close on Wednesday, September 9, a few hours earlier than usual, and reopen to customers on Thursday — a few hours later than its regular schedule, now under the name Roo Coop Maksimarket. It will be followed by the other Prisma stores in Tallinn and Harju County, then Rapla, Tartu and, finally, Narva.
The deal, as the Finnish retailer describes it, was the result of mistakes that had accumulated over the years. This view was expressed by Merje Aavasalu, CFO of Prisma Peremarket. In her assessment, the large-scale sale of the chain in Estonia was preceded by management miscalculations rather than one-off market shocks.
The transition under Coop's wing will also come at a high cost to staff. Prisma has filed a notification of the layoff of 67 support-unit employees — roughly 10% of all jobs in the company. These are so-called support functions, that is, positions not directly related to the work of the sales floors.
For customers, the change of owner means, above all, a change of brand and, potentially, of product assortment: the Maksimarket line is positioned by Coop as a maximum-choice format. The question of whether Prisma's current loyalty programs and suppliers in Estonia will be preserved remains part of the integration process.
While the Estonian stores change hands, Prisma's parent company in Finland is preparing to battle the global players of e-commerce. The Finnish retailer is launching a new trading platform, hoping to compete with giants such as Amazon. Sebastian Nyström, a top manager at Prisma, spoke about the company's strategy in this direction: the goal is to build a business model comparable in reach and logistics to those of international marketplaces.
Thus, the sale of the Estonian division appears to be part of a broader restructuring: Prisma is concentrating its resources on its home Finnish market and on a digital platform capable of standing up to Amazon-like players, while Coop consolidates its status as the largest player in Estonian food retail.
Key consequences of the deal:
- Coop Eesti will become the first company in the history of Estonian food retail to pass the 1 billion euro turnover mark — as early as next year.
- All Prisma stores in Estonia, including those in Tallinn, Harju County, Rapla, Tartu and Narva, will be renamed Coop Maksimarket in stages, starting September 9–10.
- Prisma is cutting 67 support-unit employees, about 10% of the Estonian division's staff.
The deal changes the balance of power in the Estonian food market, where no retailer has yet achieved a billion-euro turnover. Further integration details — including the fate of supply contracts and customer programs — will be disclosed by Coop and Prisma as the stores transition to the new brand.
Source: Äripäev Turundus
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