Morrisons is closing six convenience stores, just two months after saying it would scale back the opening programme for its M local chain.
Stores in Enfield and Kensington in London, as well as in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, Headington, Oxfordshire, and Aberdeen and Kilmarnock in Scotland are to close in the next few weeks, less than two years after they opened.
The closures come after months of speculation that the supermarket would be forced to shut a number of underperforming stores that had been too hastily snapped up in a rapid expansion plan. Last year Morrisons bought parcels of former Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster outlets from administrators after those stores went bust, in a bid to enter the fast-moving convenience store market.
While Sainsbury’s and Tesco own hundreds of convenience stores, Morrisons operates about 120. It partly blamed its lack of small stores for a dismal Christmas last year.
Morrisons had aimed to open 100 M locals a year but in September it admitted it would only be able to open between 60 and 70 this year as it had pulled out of a planned deal to buy a large parcel of stores.
Morrisons said at the time that it maintained “ambitious future growth targets” for M local and that in future years it still intended to open up to 100 new stores a year. But industry insiders are sceptical whether the Bradford-based business can achieve its target as it battles to secure stores against rivals Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl.
Morrisons said all the stores to be closed were leasehold and all affected staff would be moved to nearby stores. The leases on stores in Enfield and Waltham Cross have expired while it is understood the outlets in Headington and Kensington were not seen as commercially viable.
