New regulations banning national tobacco shops from hypermarkets and other big stores from 30 May will cause retail chain Tesco to close 86 out of its 113 tobacco units, business daily Világgazdaság said last Friday. Under the new rules, tobacco shops, which are a state monopoly, will not be allowed in stores larger than 2,500 square metres or at petrol stations. Tesco said it will do all it can to relocate the shops to smaller stores so that businesses will not have to shut down. Fuels group MOL and supermaket chain Auchan are also set to lose shops due to the regulations, the paper said. Some 200 out of 6,300 tobacco shops operating nationwide are located in hypermarkets, shopping centres and filling stations, generating about 17% of turnover from tobacco sales, the National Tobacco Sales Nonprofit company said.
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