In Central Europe we are the leading hypermarket retailer.

Hungary marked the start of our international expansion in 1994 and we are now a market leader with 87 stores. Our largest store in the world is in Budaors, Budapest. It is 151,000 sq ft(15,000 sq m) - the equivalent of 72 tennis courts.

In Poland we are one of the country’s largest private employers with 19,000 staff. We now have 105 stores.

Investment in price in the Czech Republic in 2006 has helped us attract over 1.5 million customers every week to our 35 stores.

Slovakia piloted the first compact hypermarket in Central Europe which offers customers in smaller towns access to a wide range of food and non-food products at hypermarket prices. We are a market leader in Slovakia with 37 stores serving nearly 1.5 million customers a week.

Turkey was the first country to roll-out the Tesco In A Box solution of IT systems and processes to its 8 hypermarkets. In 2006, we opened our first Express store in the city of Izmir.

We are a market leader in Ireland where we received an award for creating jobs for the long-term unemployed at our first Regeneration store in a deprived area of Dublin. This was also our first Tesco Extra store in the country. We have over 90 stores in Ireland.