JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Japan's Seven & i Holdings, the ultimate parent of the global 7-Eleven convenience store chain, plans to seek another partner to restart business in Indonesia, following the recent collapse of its local operations in South-east Asia's most populated country.

The company said it would "search for someone to take on the franchise and hope to restart business soon".

"Indonesia is an important country for us. This is not the end of 7-Eleven's business," a spokesman said on Friday (June 30) as quoted by Reuters.

He added that the closure had "almost no impact" on its financial results.

Eight years after the chain's first Jakarta store opened, PT Modern Internasional, the owner of the 7-Eleven master franchise in Indonesia, is closing all its domestic outlets, which totalled 161 at the end of 2016.

The company cited "limited resources" as a reason for the closings.

In its 2016 annual report, the publicly listed Modern Internasional said it had invested in several "fundamental" infrastructure projects to support the operations of its 7-Eleven stores, namely a central kitchen and a central warehouse that would be able to support up to 500 outlets.

However, by then the damage was already done by various business restrictions from different regulations. The profitability of Modern Internasional slumped from 2013 onward. In 2013, it posted net profits of Rp 49.2 billion (S$5.07 million), but the figure fell to Rp 40.3 billion in the following year.

The firm then ended in the red with Rp 58.42 billion and Rp 636.48 billion in net losses in 2015 and 2016, respectively.