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Network Journal 2005 Issue 3 |
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Shop swap continues on the high street
Thousands of shop staff are being transferred from one supermarket chain to another as stores continue to change hands among the big four and beyond.
In the latest switch Sainsbury's has bought nine former Safeway stores from Morrisons. This follows John Lewis owned Waitrose's purchase of five Safeway stores.
United Co-operatives is also in the process of buying five stores from Morrisons increasing its number of outlets to 514.
Subject to the Office of Fair Trading's approval, this latest round of disposals brings the total number of stores sold by Morrisons since its take over of Safeway to 71.
The Co-operative Group, the UK's biggest co-op, is to offload around 100 poorly performing stores, it has announced.
Most of the stores, to be sold on the open market, are former Alldays or Balfour outlets bought in 2002 and 2003 and formed a major part of the Co-op Group's expansion plans.
The Somerfield chain continues to be the subject of takeover speculation with two groups left mulling over a likely bid.
Apax Partners and Nomura are heading up the two rival consortiums now left after Icelandic investment group Baugur pulled out of the running.
Tesco is expected to double the number of stores using self-scanning checkouts, according to reports.
Tesco has predicted that more than one million customers will be using the self-scan tills each week with seven million items being scanned at the chain's 220 stores by the end of 2005.
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