BERN: Coop, Switzerland’s second largest retailer, is planning to build a new logistics and administrative centre for western Switzerland in the canton of Vaud at a cost of 88 million francs, the canton announced on Wednesday.
The complex will be built next to an existing distribution centre for the cooperative in Aclen-Vufflens, a light-industrial area northwest of Lausanne with good rail connections. The facility is scheduled to be operational by 2018, when Coop said it plans to close down its distribution centre dating from the 1950s and 1960s in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchâtel.
All employees in La Chaux-de-Fonds (around 70 according to the ATS news agency) will be offered jobs elsewhere with the cooperative group, Coop said in a news release. Meanwhile, it said employees (around 270) at an administrative site set for closure in Renens, near Lausanne, will be transferred to the new Aclen-Vufflens centre.
