Asda embarks on aggressive expansion, to create 7,000 new jobs this year

Asda embarks on aggressive expansion, to create 7,000 new jobs this year

	Published : Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:05 By : Cedric Benson Print this Story

LONDON - Wal-Mart owned supermarket giant Asda has announced that it would be launching "at least" 25 stores this year. This means that 7,000 potential jobs will be created at these stores. Asda unveiled this aggressive policy yesterday as it sought to come out of what has generally been a very tough 2005.

The new stores will be a healthy mix of non-food shops, supermarkets and corner stores, Asda said. This organic expansion comes after Asda missed internal sales and quarterly profits targets for two successive quarters last year. Asda aims to recoup the lost market share and revenue through these new stores.

Asda's market share at the start of 2005 was 17 percent, but has plummeted to 16.4 percent at the end of last month and it is this situation that the UK's second-largest supermarket group wants to rectify. The group said that the first of its new stores will be opened in Fleetwood, Lancashire early next week. Similar stores are set to be opened in Feltham, Newton Abbot and Hounslow.

The group, which trails behind Tesco PLC in supermarket stakes in the country, also announced that a food-only store is to be opened in Northampton before Easter. The store to be called Asda Essentials, will market 95 percent of Asda products and is to be styled on similar lines as that of Marks & Spencer PLC's Simply Food brand.

Asda is facing stiff competition from J Sainsbury PLC in Britain and it hopes that these new initiatives will ease the pressure. But Andy Bond, the new chief executive at Asda warned that it they could reclaim lost market share only by the middle of 2007.

Mr Bond also admitted that the supermarket had been slow in seizing the initiative and opening up different varieties of its stores, a situation he hopes to remedy with the announcement of these new stores. The news of these new stores came hours before Wal-Mart was to announce its full-year results.