Spanish neighbourhood supermarket retailer Covirán has announced plans to open two pilot stores in Morocco to test whether it can expand the franchise nationally. The new stores will be Tangier, due to open in the first six months of 2018, and Tétouan due to open later in 2018.

Covirán has said that it will open two further stores in 2019 and then seek to roll out the franchise into other cities if the pilot stores are successful.

Covirán had sales of €1.34bn ($1.65bn), in 2017, 91% of which came from its 2,900 stores in Spain. The remaining 9% came from its 300 stores in Portugal. It currently has 3,300 stores in total, accounting for 477,957m² of floorspace (145m² per store). It is the second largest supermarket retailer in Spain by store numbers and ranked ninth by floorspace.