12 charging stations in Delhaize in Luxembourg
Filling your shopping cart while filling the battery of your electric car is a service that is increasingly common in supermarket and shopping center car parks. But Delhaize intends to move up a gear with the deployment of a network of fast charging stations, in collaboration with Electra.
Fast charging points allow us to attract new customers.
The large-scale retailer has twelve fast charging points in its Luxembourg points of sale, it announced on Thursday 8 December. In detail, four stores are concerned: Alzingen, Bertrange, Junglinster and Strassen. “They will all be installed no later than 2025 depending on the allocation of permits,” adds Karima Ghozzi, spokesperson for the retailer.
Special feature, these terminals allow an 80% charge in 35 to 40 minutes, which generally corresponds to the duration of shopping for many customers. “This allows us to attract new customers. People who don’t usually take their courses at Delhaize may change their habits thanks to this facility that we cannot,” says Xavier Piesvaux, CEO of Delhaize in Belgium.
In short, the operation should allow customers who run on electricity to save time, but the adage is known: time is money. Fast charging at a price. This one is not announced, but Electra mentioned last September about 0.6 euro per kWh. Delhaize, for its part, speaks of “a rate in line with the market” and adds that the service will be open to everyone, whether they are customers or residents of the supermarket.
An investment of 100 million euros
The start of the deployment is scheduled for next year. Electra plans to invest 100 million euros in this network, which should reach 1,748 charging points for BeLux. The Belgian province of Luxembourg should have 60 terminals in the network of Delhaize stores, that of Arlon, well known to Belgian cross-border workers, is also affected by this development. The brand also intends to equip itself with 330 quick connectors for its head office and its regional distribution centers.
With these new charging points, the lion brand boasts the largest retail network in Belgium with one particularity: fast charging stations. In Luxembourg, charging stations for electric cars are appearing in the car parks of several large retailers – such as new Lidl stores which open in December – but also shopping centres.
A service that involves sometimes heavy costs for the structures, as evidenced by the transition to paid parking for employees of shops in the Auchan shopping center in Kirchberg. The bird sign, owner of the car park, explained at the end of November that “in the current economic context, and given the numerous investments necessary for the modernization and transformation of our car park to accommodate electric vehicles, we are no longer in able to maintain this advantage and bear the costs for all the signs of the shopping mall”.