Toyota Tsusho Corporation (“Toyota Tsusho”) announced today that its affiliate CFAO SAS (“CFAO”) opened “PlaYce Yaoundé” in Cameroon’s capital city of Yaoundé on July 6, 2022, to strengthen its retail business. PlaYce Yaoundé is one of the largest shopping centers in Cameroon, with approximately 17,000 square meters of space on 35,000 square meters of land. It includes a Carrefour hypermarket with 4,000 square meters of sales area and a wide range of more than 20,000 products, and a shopping mall with 50 international brand stores, restaurants, and other facilities.
CFAO has operated shopping malls and supermarkets in 17 locations of three countries in West Africa (Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Senegal) with creating over 1,500 local jobs since opening its first PlaYce location in Cote d’Ivoire in 2015. In partnership with Carrefour, a leading French hypermarket chain, CFAO operates supermarkets that sell wide range of products with guaranteed traceability from global brands and local suppliers at competitive price points.
Cameroon has a land area that is approximately 1.3 times bigger than Japan. Its capital city of Yaoundé has a population of approximately 2.27 million people. By opening the Toyota Tsusho Group’s first PlaYce large-scale shopping center, CFAO will provide a new shopping experience for the people of Cameroon and create 300 new jobs. In addition, CFAO plans to take on the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions through measures such as the installation of approximately 2,300 solar panels on the roof of PlaYce Yaoundé and use of renewable energy sources to meet approximately one-quarter of the site’s electricity needs through solar energy generation.
The Toyota Tsusho Group will continue to strengthen its retail business to meet the needs of consumers in Africa based on its “WITH AFRICA FOR AFRICA” philosophy that aims to grow together with the people and society of Africa. It will also contribute to industrialization and job creation in Africa through further store development and the promotion of local production and distribution.
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