Morrisons to shut four branches, jeopardising 400 jobs

The closures follow a review by Morrisons of its 494-branches estate, The Guardian reported.

The shops to shut are in Crawley, West Sussex, Ince in Wigan, Shirley in Solihull and Swindon town centre – the latter branch has been open for less than five years.

A Morrisons spokesperson said: “We will now be going through a consultation process at the stores and discussing how to reduce redundancies and where possible redeploy colleagues.”

The closures emerged after the latest Kantar food retail data showed that Morrisons’ performance was the worst of the big four grocers.

Morrisons’ sales slipped 2.7% in the 12 weeks to August 11, and its market share edged down from 10.3% to 10.1% year on year.

Morrisons is not the only grocer to be closing stores as the market is reshaped by the rise of value grocers Aldi and Lidl and the growth of online shopping through services such as Ocado. Waitrose, for instance, revealed last month that it was closing seven shops.

Morrisons has been expanding its operations by selling through Amazon and Ocado, as well as supplying convenience store group McColl’s.

Morrisons is thought to be potentially of interest to overseas buyers as a result of the fall in the value of sterling arising from Brexit uncertainty, and because of a fall in its share price, which could make it a cheap takeover target.

The acquisition of pub and brewery business Greene King by Superdrug owner and Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka-shing has been taken as evidence that overseas buyers are taking an increasing interest in UK businesses.