Morrisons has announced its plans to open thousands more of its Morrisons Daily stores, as the supermarket remains on track to hit 500 sites by 2023.
With 486 stores currently located across the UK and Channel Islands, Morrisons wholesale director, Paul Dobson said the retailer has plans to work “towards the next milestone” by the end of next year in opening more of its convenience and forecourt sites.
Speaking of these goals at The Convenience Conference on 13 September, Dobson said: “Ultimately our ambition is to have stores numbers in the thousands, not the hundreds, in the future and by adding more high-quality retailers we will build those numbers.
“Across Great Britain, 35% of the population are now within a 10-minute drive from a Morrisons Daily, which we think is good progress since starting off in 2017.”
Morrisons group online, wholesale and convenience director, Joseph Sutton, who also spoke at the conference added that the retailer‘s acquisition of symbol group retailer McColl’s, which was bought for £190.1 million in May, will help to improve Morrisons wholesale operations.
In July, Morrisons confirmed over 200 McColl’s stores had already been converted to Morrison’s Daily stores, with a target of 450 by November 2022.
He said: “It’s going to create more investment in this channel of the business. It’s going to mean more collateral that our partners can use, like planograms, access to EPoS systems, new supply chain facilities, or bigger buying of concessions, as well as more format development.”
“We’re very excited, and we’re so lucky to have bought the McColl’s business, but there’s lots of hard work ahead of us.”
Last week trade body, Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) began an investigation into Morrisons acquisition of McColl’s which found potential competition concerns at 35 sites.
As a result, Morrisons was given five working days to propose ways to fix these concerns.
