Wal-Mart sets out expansion plans
Drive for US sales growth continues
Wal-Mart has announced aggressive US expansion plans for 2005 as it seeks continued sales growth in an increasingly tough sales environment.
The world’s biggest retailer is to support its US opening programme with details of international expansion, including plans for Asda in the UK, likely to be announced in the coming weeks.
In the US, Wal-mart plans around 40 to 45 new discount stores and 240 to 250 new Supercenters in the financial year starting in February 2005. Relocations or expansions of existing discount stores will account for approximately 160 Supercenters, while the rest will be new units.
Wal-Mart plans to expand its Neighborhood Market concept by 25 to 30 new units, while the Sam’s Club division expects to open up to 40 clubs, around 20 of which will be relocations or expansions.
Internationally, Wal-Mart plans to open between 155 to 165 units in existing markets, around 30 of which will be relocations or expansions. In the UK, Asda is about to start trials of a general merchandise store, but Wal-Mart has not said at this stage if a roll-out of this format is included in its expansion numbers.
In the US, it also plans to build three new regional general merchandise distribution centres and three new food distribution centres, adding more than five million square feet of distribution space.
Lee Scott, president and CEO said: “The planned square footage growth for the coming year represents approximately 55m sq ft of new retail space, and represents more than an 8 per cent increase over the 655m sq ft, we estimate we will have at the end of fiscal year 2005. We also plan to remodel approximately 360 stores and clubs in the next year.”
