A HUGE DIY outlet and a cinema firm are set to axe Scottish branches later this month.
The massive firms both announced they will both be losing locations north of the border.
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It comes amid moves to cut costs and deals with other businesses.
Cineworld bosses announced they have plans to axe one of their venues in Glasgow.
If given the green light, movie lovers in the city will have one less place to view the latest flicks.
The cinema chain is undergoing a restructuring plan in a bid to save cash.
It means six Cineworlds could be at risk of shutting down.
Among them is the branch in Glasgow’s Forge shopping centre.
The Parkhead branch could see the shutters pulled down permanently by the end of this month.
Other locations in Bedford, Hinckley, Loughborough, Yate, and Swindon are expected to be axed over the next few months.
A Cineworld spokesperson said: “We are implementing a restructuring plan that will provide our company with a strong platform to return our business to profitability, attract further investment from the group, and ensure a sustainable long-term future for Cineworld in the UK.”
But even more of the cinema chain’s locations could be at risk as they enter into negotiations about rent rates.
If an agreement isn’t reached with landlords, then even more branches might be closed down.
And another big name is disappearing from Scotland‘s high streets this month.
A Scottish Homebase store is set to close down.
The firm has 144 locations across the UK but has since entered a deal to transfer sites to Sainsbury’s.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
Ten of the home improvement outlets will be transferred this month.
Among them is the Homebase in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
The rest of the sites set to be converted into Sainsbury’s supermarket are in Sutton Coldfield, Bromsgrove, Cromer, Derry/Londonderry, Fareham, Lowestoft, Newark, Omagh and Rugby.
The home improvement retailer and garden centre has closed 106 stores since it was taken over by Hilco Capital in 2018.
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