The biggest retailer in Europe, Carrefour has announced that it will be spending 1.5 billion euros or $2 billion in what it calls its turnaround plan. It will be revamping all its hypermarkets to be able to position itself differently.

The France-based retailer has been under performing in almost all of its main markets which are in Europe. To be able to revive the sales in these states, Carrefour came up with five pilot stores in France, Spain and Belgium.

The idea behind this was to revive the retail format that contributes 60 per cent of the sales of the group and also adds almost 50 per cent of its domestic sales.

Meanwhile, it is planning to convert 245 of its 500 hypermarkets in these countries and also in Italy and Greece. The revamping, Carrefour said will be starting form the second quarter of 2011 and is expected to get over by 2012.

Importance will be given to the markets that contribute to more than 70 per cent of the 37 billion euros of sales in Europe. The rest of the stores, which will be 255 in number, will be given lesser preference and will be given just 2 million euros per store.