As Wal-Mart released its second-quarter results this week, it said there would be 40 new Asda stores by the end of the year.
Since January, 14 of these stores have already opened and the total will include the 12 former Morrisons stores in Northern Ireland, which will be opened by Christmas, six stand-alone George stores and four Asda Living stores.
The 10th George standalone was set to open in Brighton yesterday (August 19) and this week Asda received planning consent from Glasgow City Council for its fourth Asda Living outlet.
The 25,000 sq ft store will be the first of Asda’s non-food stores to be built in Scotland - there are currently three in England. It will be part of the new £200m Glasgow Fort retail park, which has 400,000 sq ft of retail space. Morrisons has already opened a supermarket on an adjoining site.
Asda is also introducing more two-floor stores to its portfolio. After struggling for decades to get planning consent to revamp its old store in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden, it finally has permission to build a new two-floor 60,000 sq ft store. It is due to open in November.
It has also received planning permission to open a new two-floor 73,000 sq ft store in the Cornblow Centre in Halesowen, West Midlands.
Asda’s sales growth was in the low single digits for the second quarter, with flat like-for-like sales. The strongest sales came from non-food and clothing.
Profits were down at Asda, which accounts for 45% of Wal-Mart International, partly due to the $36m (£19.96m) cost of restructuring the workforce, but president and CEO Lee Scott said: “We are already seeing improvements in the UK and I expect that international in total will return to growing its earnings faster than sales in the third quarter.”