Lidl reaches major milestone in UK
Budget supermarket Lidl UK has reached a major milestone with the opening of five new stores to take its total number of UK stores to 700.
The new shops in Edinburgh, Stockton, Hull, Polegate and Rosehill form part of the supermarket’s accelerated expansion which includes the opening of up to 19 new stores over an eight week period in January and February this year.
The openings have created over 700 new jobs.
Ingo Fischer, Lidl UK board director for expansion and development, said: “As the UK’s fastest growing supermarket, surpassing 700 stores is yet further proof of our ambitious rate of expansion across Britain. It’s great that more people than ever before have access to our high quality, fresh and locally sourced products at incredible value, and that as a result, we’re able to create more jobs for local communities up and down the country.”
Lidl is investing £1.45 billion in its UK expansion across 2017 and 2018. This includes plans to open over 50 new stores and regenerate 30 existing stores in the 2018 financial year.
At the beginning of the year, the supermarket also announced plans for a major new regional distribution centre in Luton, in addition to a further five new warehouses already in the pipeline.
During the busy Christmas period, Lidl achieved sales growth of 16% year-on-year.
