Morrisons has announced plans to open 400 more convenience stores across the UK as part of its wider expansion goals.
This comes as a much-needed win for the high street economy which has been hit by the recent trend of store closures following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The supermarket giant confirmed the 400 new stores will add to its already 1,600 strong convenience outlets in the UK.
Earlier this week, Morrisons published its trading update for the second quarter of the 2023/24 tax year.
According to the retailer, there was “increasing confidence” from shoppers as sales for the three months to April 28 of £3.8billion.
This is a slight 3.7 per cent rise year-on-year with profits in the first half, not including petrol stations, jumping 16 per cent to £321million.
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The announcement came as part of the supermarket giant’s latest trading update
MORRISONS
Notably, the supermarket chain reported it had slashed its debt by 35 per cent from £6.2bn to £4bn.
As part of the trading update, Morrisons confirmed it has acquired 38 convenience stores in the Channel Islands from SandpiperCI.
With the McColl’s conversion programme now complete, the retail group is hoping to have 2,000 Morrisons Daily convenience stores across the UK in 2025.
This ambitious expansion plan comes as Morrisons celebrates 125 years of trading this year.
Despite reaching this landmark, the supermarket has lost ground with consumers to its rivals offering discount prices following its private equity takeover.
Furthermore, it conceded the title of the fourth biggest supermarket retailer in the UK to Aldi two years ago.
To rectify this, the retailer launched its “Aldi and and Lidl Price Match” to highlight the savings that customers could make.
Rami Baitiéh, the group’s chief executive officer, shared that he was “pleased” with Morrisons’ overall financial performance over the period.
“Over the last eight months we have listened carefully to over 340,000 customers, colleagues and suppliers and the insights from this exercise are helping to refine and shape the activity in all three pillars of our strategy: commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation.
“It’s clear that availability and our loyalty scheme are the two areas our customers talk about the most and so we are focusing intensively on these areas.
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Britain’s high streets have been hit by a wave of store closures as of late PA
“Our Aldi and Lidl Price Match, introduced in February, has had a great start and is giving customers increasing confidence in the competitiveness of our prices across the shop.
“Convenience remains an important and strongly growing channel for us. With the McColl’s conversion programme now complete and the recent acquisition of 38 stores in the Channel Islands, we have over 1,600 Morrisons Daily convenience stores across the country, about two thirds of which are wholly owned.
“With this strong growth trajectory we are now targeting a total of 2,000 convenience stores in 2025.”
Jo Goff, Morrisons’ chief financial officer, added: “This has been another solid quarter of progress with sales and volume improvements right across the business. “