March the 28th, 2022 - After completing the takeover of the Kutina-based company Lonia, the retail giant Studenac will have as many as 1,050 stores across the country and will be by far the largest chain in all of the Republic of Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the Omis-based company Studenac is currently owned by the Polish investment giant Enterprise investors, and in the meantime it purchased the bakery chain Pan Pek and Zadar's Sonik market, Porec's Istrian supermarkets, Biograd's Bura chain, and recently Dubrovnik's very well known Pemo brand.

By that point, this large company had reached the impressive number of around 750 stores located up and down the country. The Kutina-based company, through the newly established company Lonia trgovina d.o.o., operates a network of 300 grocery stores and eight wholesale centres in Croatia. Two years ago, Lonia took over the Djurdjevac-based company Sloga podravska trgovina, which boasts about 70 stores.

Lonia operates in the City of Zagreb, Zagreb County, Sisak-Moslavina County, Bjelovar-Bilogora County, Pozega-Slavonia County, Brod-Posavina County, Karlovac and Karlovac County, and the Varazdin and Koprivnica-Krizevci counties, and in these regions, Studenac will take over their market positions, as reported by Danica.

After taking over Lonia, Omis's very well known Studenac will therefore have around 1,050 stores under its belt in Croatia, becoming the retailer with by far the largest number of outlets nationwide. They are in primarily ''smaller formats'', such as small neighbourhood shops and supermarkets. Unlike, for example, the second largest sales giant in Croatia, Konzum, which has 608 stores, but they're mostly larger supermarkets and hypermarkets.

The third in terms of number of shopping outlets is the well known Dalmatian Tommy from Split with a total of 226 stores, Spar ranks fourth with 118, and Plodine is fifth with 107. The wildly popular Lidl has 105, and its sister company Kaufland (part of the same Schwarz group) boasts 45 Croatian stores.

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