No price was disclosed, and Central is paying out of its own cash.  The acquisition ends a run that started in 1984, when Aeon entered Thailand as Siam Jusco.  While it’s not a market exit since the Japanese group still runs other operations in the country, it all makes sense when read alongside a document published in Tokyo three months earlier. What Tokyo decided According to Aeon’s five-year plan to FY2030, published in May, the group plans to further invest in high-return businesses, with the named drivers being health and wellness, property and entertainment, and Vietnam. At the same time, it is cleaning up loss-making units and overlapping subsidiaries left behind by earlier expansion. Aeon’s statement on the Thai sale, as translated in trade coverage, follows that plan closely. It says the group’s remaining focus in Thailand will be finance, entertainment, and health and wellness. Aeon is keeping the businesses that earn fees and need little property. It is selling the one that ties up cash, stock and real estate for thin margins. Aeon Thana Sinsap, its Bangkok-listed consumer finance arm, took about US$533 million in revenue over the twelve months to February 2026,  far more than 30 supermarkets were ever going to earn. Too small to win Aeon opened its first overseas MaxValu in Bangkok in October 2007 and built out from there. The network topped out near 80 stores around 2016, then shrank by roughly 60 per cent over the following decade. The chain struggled to gain traction as competition heated up with domestic players dominating the market. CP Axtra’s Lotus’s runs about 2400 stores across Thailand, covering multiple formats, including hypermarkets, supermarkets and smaller neighbourhood c-stores. BJC’s Big C holds second place in hypermarkets. CP All’s 7-Eleven accounts for about 72 per cent of the country’s convenience stores. Central’s own Tops chain had more than 736 branches before this deal, spanning from supermarkets, Food Hall, Fine Food to Tops Daily and aims to reach 1000 stores by next year. Instead of competing in a market heavily dominated by local rivals, Aeon is shifting its focus to its neighbouring market, Vietnam.  Under the plan running to March 2031, Aeon has set aside about 60 per cent of its total ASEAN investment for Vietnam. Aeon Mall chief executive Kazuhide Ohno told Nikkei last month that revenue from the group’s Vietnamese malls and general merchandise stores is growing about 25 per cent a year, and that Aeon wants more than ¥300 billion of Vietnamese revenue by FY2030, which is close to three times the FY2025 figure. The build-out is dense. Around 30 malls by FY2030, up from nine when the target was set. Roughly 100 general merchandise stores and super supermarkets. About 200 smaller grocery stores. And a push beyond Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City into provincial cities. Aeon called Vietnam its highest-priority market, where profit in the country rose about 1.7 times year on year. What’s in it for Central?  Central will add more than 900,000 shoppers at once to a loyalty base of almost 30 million members. The deal includes land and a ready-to-eat processing centre, which Central says will lift production capacity and let it develop its own ready-to-eat range. It also lands while food is the part of Central that is working. First-half core profit from continuing operations rose 42.5 per cent to THB5.002 billion, on revenue of THB126.633 billion, up 2.4 per cent. In the first quarter, food sales grew 6.4 per cent to THB28,759 million while fashion and hardlines both slipped.