Wal-Mart to open 3000th international store

BENTONVILLE, Ark. Wal-Mart today touted its international growth with the announcement that it will open its 3000th international store in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

"The opening of Wal-Mart's 3000th international store marks a significant milestone for our business outside the U.S.," said Mitch Slape, senior vp of international business development for Wal-Mart Stores. "In just 16 years, the Wal-Mart has gone from just one international retail location to 3,000, with nearly 600,000 associates serving 49 million international customers each week. In the last seven years, we've had a compound annual growth rate of 27.4%. These are tremendous achievements by any standard."

The Sao Paulo supercenter is scheduled to open on Nov. 22. According to Wal-Mart, it will employ some 300 associates from the local area and, like Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., incorporate many sustainability features in its design. For example, a plant preservation area will feature 170 plant species from the Mata Atlantica, a Brazilian region threatened of extinction by deforestation. Three adult trees were transplanted to the store site, two Jerivas, a type of Brazilian palm tree native to the Mata Atlantica, and an avocado tree. The store facade will feature a "green wall," covered in climbing plants, contributing toward better integration of the building with the surrounding landscape. Two sewage treatment stations were built at the store site for water reutilization in the store's toilets and for garden irrigation. In the store's parking lot, a mixture of concrete and grass was used to allow better rainwater absorption, and therefore make it less disruptive to the environment than conventional materials.