Moscow, 15 January 2021 – X5 Retail Group N.V. (“X5” or the “Company”), a leading Russian food retailer (LSE and MOEX ticker: “FIVE”), announces the 2020 results of “Safety Zone”, a joint project of the Centre to Search for Missing People and the Liza Alert search and rescue team that is being implemented at Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores. In 2020, store employees and rescue volunteers helped 991 lost people, including 76 children, return home. Forty-three more people received assistance during the first ten days of 2021.
Safety Zones were piloted in spring 2019 at over 2,600 Pyaterochka stores in Moscow and the Moscow region. In the fall of the same year, the project was rolled out to all stores across the 65 regions where the chain operates. Perekrestok joined the project in November 2020. Safety Zones are special areas in the stores marked by an orange geolocation sign that serve as a landmark for lost people. A person who is lost can either ask an employee for help or wait for assistance in the designated area at a Pyaterochka or Perekrestok store.
In 2020, help was most often sought in Moscow and the Moscow region (153 people), St Petersburg and the Leningrad region (80 people), Tatarstan (76 people), and the Sverdlovsk and Samara regions (65 and 61 people respectively).
The Company also supports volunteers by providing them with food through Pyaterochka cards, which they can use to pay in stores to buy goods in 27 regions, including Moscow, St Petersburg, the Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov and Omsk regions, the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Bashkortostan and others.
“The Safety Zone project was launched in the spring of 2019 in Pyaterochka stores and Perekrestok joined last year. It is important for us that every year we can help more and more people and we are glad that our stores not only provide customers in different regions with high-quality products, but can also provide assistance to those who are in a difficult situation,” said Igor Shekhterman, CEO of X5 Retail Group.