Hellofresh withdraws from Japan
Cooking box shipper Hellofresh has pulled out of its first Asian market, Japan, less than a year after launching. "The first months in Japan have shown that there is currently no market environment that would have justified additional growth financing," a spokeswoman said in Berlin on Wednesday when asked. At the end of last year, the branch was therefore closed. Previously, there had already been speculation about this decision of the MDax-listed company.
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Instead, Hellofresh wants to focus on its other markets, it added. In addition to its home market of Germany, the company is active in many European countries as well as the U.S., Canada and Australia, and supplies ready meals in addition to cooking boxes. Japan was considered a test run. "It is definitely our plan that we want to learn more about the Asian markets and how our products are received there," said Group CEO Dominik Richter in early March last year. However, the manager always kept a low profile on the subject of Japan.
Jefferies analyst Sebastian Patulea assessed the decision positively. He said the management wanted to keep its financial resources together. Investors in particular had recently been looking primarily at profits - Japan would still have needed several years to become profitable, the expert wrote recently. (dpa)
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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