Big Bazar employees are trying to avoid bankruptcy at the last minute

Discount chain Wibra wants to expand further and also sees opportunities if rival Big Bazar stores disappear from the Dutch high street. “If there are thirty or forty suitable locations, we are very interested,” director Bas Duesen said in an interview with De Telegraaf.

Wibra’s CEO told the newspaper that five more stores will be added this year in the Netherlands and Belgium. Next year, Wibra aims to establish about twenty new branches. If successful, the chain will have nearly three hundred stores.

Duijsens confirms in De Telegraaf that his chain is “very profitable”. “We don’t have a single store that loses.” But this does not mean that Wibra only wants all the sites where Big Bazar still exists. The CEO says his chain will have to pay close attention to the rent of those buildings. “It’s guaranteed to be at a high level here and there.”

Big Bazar is facing serious financial difficulties and appears to be on the verge of collapse. The chain had previously requested a special cooling-off period in order to reorganize and enter into discussions with creditors. But a judge decided Monday that the series wouldn’t get that extra time after all. Big Bazaar blames its own problems on, among other things, a sharp rise in prices on the shopping streets, as a result of which customers began spending less money at the chain.