Five city branches of the Marqt speciality supermarket group are being taken over by the Jumbo supermarket chain, including the large store in Amsterdam’s Gelderlandplein shopping centre.

Marqt, which said earlier this autumn it would close its large branches on Amsterdam’s Rembrandtplein and on the Hofweg in The Hague, currently has 19 outlets.

In October, Udea, the parent company of organic supermarket chain Ekoplaza, reached agreement to take over the Marqt group and said then that more stores would close.

Earlier this month, Jumbo announced that it had reached a deal with the Hema group to take over 17 of its branches and to sell its products in six Hema railway station outlets.

‘We want to be where there is growth,’ Jumbo CFO Ron van Veen told the Financieele Dagblad in an interview. ‘And that means being in the cities and with public transport.’

One Ekoplaza supermarket will also become a Jumbo store.

The expansion drive added €1bn to the company’s 2019 turnover, taking the total to €8.4bn. The group has 21% of the Dutch supermarket market.