Sainsbury’s has revealed plans to wave goodbye to nine more Argos branches on the UK high street.
While the retail giant continues to streamline its operations, Sainsbury’s, which owns Argos, intends to shut nine standalone stores in the forthcoming financial year.
However, there is a silver lining, as Sainsbury’s confirmed: “For the full financial year we expect to open 13 Argos stores within Sainsbury’s and close nine standalone stores.”
The supermarket behemoth, shadowing industry competitors like Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, Aldi and Lidl, remains tight-lipped regarding the exact locations of the impending Argos closures.
However, an Argos representative gave insight to The Sun newspaper, stating: “The transformation of our Argos store and distribution network has been progressing at pace for several years now, improving availability, convenience and service for customers.
“As part of this, we are continuing to open new Argos stores and collection points in many of our Sainsbury’s supermarkets, enabling customers to purchase thousands of technology, home and toy products from Argos while picking up their groceries.”
Since March 2023, Sainsbury’s has whittled down its stand-alone Argos locations by 72, leaving only 213 from a previous count of 385, reports BirminghamLive.
Sainsbury’s announced at the time: “In total, for 2024/25, we expect to open three supermarkets and around 25 new convenience stores, with four supermarkets and three to five convenience stores to close.
“In addition, we expect to open around ten Argos stores inside Sainsbury’s and close around 15-20 Argos stand-alone stores.”
Earlier this year, the owner of Argos stated: “We expect the stand-alone Argos store estate will reduce to around 190 stores by March 2025 and we expect to have 450–460 Argos stores inside Sainsbury’s supermarkets as well as 480–500 collection points.”
In a recent trading update, Simon Roberts, chief executive of Sainsbury’s, expressed his satisfaction with their performance, saying: “We are pleased with our market-beating grocery performance.”