The FINANCIAL — One of Turkey’s leading food retailers, Migros, will expand its operations using a €60 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The company is aiming to increase efforts to employ a gender-balanced workforce and further enhance the energy efficiency of its store network with the new EBRD financing.
Migros operates in 81 Turkish provinces, through a network of 2,286 food retail stores under the Migros, Migros Jet, 5M and Macrocenter banners. The company has been committed to creating more career prospects for women and has fully integrated sustainability into its operations.
The EBRD loan will support Migros to develop and implement an equal opportunities action plan, which will set out gender-responsible recruitment strategies and open up more job opportunities for women. The retailer is planning to hire over 2,000 women to fill new positions created as a result of burgeoning demand for grocery shopping.
In order to meet customer demand boosted by the coronavirus pandemic, and in line with its sustainability strategy, the company aims to open new stores and refurbish others, to embed renewable energy systems and energy-saving technologies. Migros will also work with the EBRD to reduce the environmental footprint of its private label products.
Greening the local economy is one of the Bank’s main goals in Turkey. The EBRD is committed to providing funds and policy support that will help Turkey cope with the coronavirus crisis and use the current situation to “tilt to green” decisively.
Migros is a long-standing client of the EBRD in Turkey and Kazakhstan.
The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Turkey and to date has invested almost €13 billion in the country through 334 projects, with 95 per cent of these in the private sector. In 2020 the Bank responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by stepping up its financing in the country to €1.7 billion from €1.0 billion in 35 projects in 2019.
