Six more join worldwide retail exchange

ZAANDAM: Dutch supermarkets group Koninklijke Ahold said on Thursday that six

large retail groups had joined the WorldWide Retail Exchange (WWRE) eCommerce

platform, which has Ahold as one of the initiators.

The six new entrants are Hong Kong's Dairy Farm International, Denmark's

Dansk Supermarket, Spain's El Corte Ingles, US groups Rite Aid Corp. and

Supervalu and Britain's Safeway Plc. The WWRE business-to-business purchasing

platform, which is due to start operations in August, now has 25 retail groups

from Europe, the US and Asia as participants. Their suppliers will be invited to

join at end-August.

Ahold's senior vice president global sourcing Gerard van Breen said

pan-European and worldwide purchasing offered clear advantages and added there

was an "enormous" interest among market players to participate in WWRE.

Van Breen said the platform was expected to generate substantial cost cuts

for retailers but added it would also offer advantages to suppliers because they

would have access to all participants.

WWRE's 25 participants have joint annual turnover of about Euro $540 billion

($508.5 billion). The eCommerce platform's technology has been supplied by IBM,

i2 and Ariba.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.