Morrisons aims to open 400 more convenience stores by 2025
Morrisons is aiming to open 400 more convenience stores to take its total to 2,000 in 2025.
The news comes as the supermarket announced its second quarter trading results in which it said group like-for-like sales excluding fuel grew by 4.1% in the three months to 28 April.
Total sales increased by 3.7% to £3.8 billion as the retailer made good progress with its three strategic pillars of commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation.
Meanwhile, underlying EBITDA for the first half of its financial year climbed by 16% to £321 million.
Rami Baitiéh, Morrisons chief executive officer, said: “I am pleased with the overall performance of the business in the second quarter with supermarkets, convenience, wholesale and online all delivering growth and contributing to a 4.1% increase in like-for-like sales.
“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.”
During the period, Morrisons completed its £2.5 billion sale of its petrol filling station business to MFG and has recently acquired 38 convenience stores in the Channel Islands from Sandpiper. It now has 1,600 convenience stores across the UK and is aiming for a total of 2,000 in 2025.
It also introduced an Aldi and Lidl Price Match scheme in the quarter which it said has got off to a good start.
Baitiéh said: “This summer we are celebrating 125 years since Sir Ken Morrison’s father established the very first Morrisons store.
“This important milestone is a great platform to remind customers of the timeless values that Sir Ken built into the company and how our Market Street counters and our 18 food making factories set Morrisons apart.
“Embracing, preserving and enhancing his legacy is the foundation for building the Morrisons of the future.”
