Morrisons will open its smallest new store in 20 years in the Glasgow suburb of Erskine later this year.

At 24,800 sq ft - nearly half the size of the Bradford-based retailer's usual supermarket - it looks set to be the first of a new wave of more compact retail outlets which, the company says, will be better-suited to some areas than its regular, larger-footprint format.

News of the store, which is being fitted out now and is due to open in August or September, comes after Morrisons chief executive Marc Bolland pledged to create more tailored stores, ditching the retailer's one-size-fits-all approach.

The switch in strategy was revealed following his six-month long review of the business, which he instigated after joining in September last year.

Although the chain continues to build big-format stores - three will open in Scotland alone this year, boosting Morrisons' total number of outlets north of the Border to more than 50 - it expects Erskine to pave the way for a roll-out of custom-sized supermarkets across Britain.

Constructed by a private developer, it will be leased by the retailer. When it opens, Morrisons' existing store in a neighbouring mall will be closed and the operation moved next door.

The capital for the store, which will cost "several million" to fit out, is coming out of the £180m budget Bolland has set aside for supermarket investment and development over the next three years.

The new format probably would not have happened without the £3.5bn acquisition of Safeway, said Mark Harrison, Morrisons' director of stores for Scotland and the north of England.

The chain struggled at first to fit its standard, vertically integrated operation with bakeries and butcheries into stores as small as 12,000 sq ft, said Harrison, but it now had the measure of the smaller space.

"It's taken us 12 months of fine-tuning but we now have the confidence to take on stores the size of the new one," he added.

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