Frozen foods retailer Iceland is reportedly considering a bid for any stores that Sainsbury's and Asda are required to sell, once their high-profile merger has been completed, according to reports.
The Financial Times reported that the retailer is seeking to acquire new sites for its Food Warehouse business, and while it believes that many Asda and Sainsbury's stores would be too large for its requirements, “you can redevelop, you can carve up, you can put in neighbouring retailers alongside”, the company's managing director Richard Walker told the paper.
The Competition and Markets Authority is due to unveil its provisional findings into the Sainsbury's-Asda deal in the near future, with a variety of estimates on how many stores the merged entity will have to offload.
Range Of Options
"We are looking at everything for sure,” Walker told the Financial Times. “Food retail drives footfall and we are the only supermarket that is opening on retail parks.
"We are looking at every retailer, trying to pick off as much as we can.”
Iceland's Food Warehouse concept is typically located on retail parks outside of town centres, and was sparked by the rapid rise of Aldi and Lidl in the UK, Walker added.
“The German discounters have been so formidable because they have the same unit, same shape and size, there are great efficiencies,” he told the paper. “It’s all about productivity. We definitely took some learnings from them.”
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
