Tesco names store closures
The retailer said it would be closing 30 convenience stores – 18 Express outlets and 12 inner-city Metro shops – along with seven superstores and six of its 12 non-food ventures, called Homeplus. None of Tesco’s large hypermarkets – the Tesco Extra stores – has been earmarked for closure.
The closures follow the abandonment of 49 sites where the retailer planned stores but has not built them.
The announced closures are spread across Britain and illustrate the scale of Tesco’s over-expansion during the past 10 years. The demise of its Liverpool Kensington Express store will still leave shoppers with 18 Tesco outlets within two miles of the stricken store, while there are 14 Tescos within that distance of the doomed Express on South Tottenham High Road in north London, plus 12 that near to the Express on Longbridge Road in Barking, east London, which is also scheduled to close.
Lewis said: “In January, I announced that our performance as a business has fallen significantly short of where we would want it to be and that to protect the future of the business in the UK we would close 43 unprofitable stores.
The Express and Homeplus stores will close on 15 March; the Tesco Metros and Superstores on the list on 4 April. The identity of the stores has been revealed after Lewis said this month that he was closing the Cheshunt head office in Hertfordshire, as well as the 43 closures and the 49 planned stores now abandoned.
There are 2,614 Tesco stores in Britain, a figure that increased by 37 during the previous 12 months, at the time of the grocer’s interim results released in October. The stores cover a total of 39m sq ft (3.6m sq metres).
Source: theguardian.com
