OKay Viroinval fills the need for local shop

The remote municipality of Viroinval in Namur is a collection of 8 wooded villages close to the French border. The town has 5,700 inhabitants, and at weekends and during holidays there are many second-home visitors and tourists. They had to make do with a small number of food stores. The ideal location for opening a neighbourhood supermarket OKay.

With its simple architecture and green planting all around, this 125th OKay store is well integrated into this beautiful valley.

Olivier Massin, expansion manager at Colruyt Group Real Estate, is happy to explain the success of the project.

Answering the need for neighbourhood supermarkets for residents, second-home residents and tourists
Integrated into the environment
Energy-efficient store that operates completely without fossil fuels
Sustainable store in the region known for its biodiversity

In figures

650 m²

retail area

54

parking spaces

4.482 m²

site surface area

We managed to reconcile the need for a local neighbourhood store with Colruyt Group's desire to strengthen its network in this remote region in the south of the country.

Cédric Lambrechts | Intersectio | Retail project developer

Need for local shop

The various villages that make up the municipality suffered from a lack food shops. The local government therefore welcomed the initiative for a neighbourhood shop. There was no OKay store in the region yet and the location of the site is very good: in a residential area and easily accessible.

Intersectio and Pronéservim, developers in retail projects, succeed in uniting the interests of all stakeholders.

The flow of this project has been very good right from the start. The owner of the land contacted us to see if we were interested. And we were indeed!

Sustainability all the way

We aim to build by default with the lowest possible environmental impact.

For this neighbourhood supermarket, we also applied sustainable technology whenever we could. For example, we used rainwater for the toilets.

It goes without saying that we insulated the building to the maximum. And we also ensured energy-efficient and eco-friendly daily operations of the store.

The fresh market, for example, has a refrigeration system running on propane. This natural refrigerant is greenhouse gas neutral in contrast to conventional synthetic refrigerants.

But there is more. The heating system, for example, recycles all the residual heat from propane cooling. As a result, the store emits 99 % less CO₂ for heating than a traditional store with a natural gas or fuel oil boiler.

The process

2014: Land sale agreement

2017: Store opening