More than 200 Asda employees are set to leave the business as it prepares to conclude its IT system upgrade.

It is understood that the change comes as the majority of Asda’s operations have successfully transitioned to new systems as part of ‘Project Future’ – the supermarket’s attempt to transition from former majority owner Walmart’s legacy IT system.

An Asda spokesperson said: “For many teams the work is done and so it is natural that colleagues leave the project as the specific workstreams they are working on are completed or as their contracts finish.”

Hundreds of people were hired to work on the three-year IT upgrade, which has experienced issues over the past year.

In January, the grocer was at risk of being forced to pay a multimillion-pound penalty if the £800m IT upgrade was delayed. However, Asda was granted an extension to the timescale by Walmart shortly after.

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Earlier this year, Asda chairman Allan Leighton introduced a series of cost-cutting measures, including redundancies, as he warned of a long road ahead for the struggling supermarket.

The grocery giant revealed the axing of 13 regional managers as part of a senior shake-up, designed to increase performance and cut costs.

It wasn’t the only grocer to cut jobs at the time, as Morrisons unveiled plans to cut over 200 jobs in its retail people team, Sainsbury’s said it was slashing over 3,000 jobs, and Tesco said it would cut 400 store and head office jobs.

Just last month, Aldi began consulting over proposals to restructure some head office teams, in a move that could see up to 350 jobs cut.