Iceland has opened its first dark store to cater for the “very strong” growth in its online business.
The 18,000 sq foot store in Tipton, the West Midlands, will help Iceland fulfil orders from its online shopping service, which rolled out nationwide in 2014.
Iceland would not reveal sales figures for the service but, in June 2015, it said it made 200,000 deliveries a week of in-store and online purchases. And it told The Grocer it was experiencing “very strong” growth.
Property agency Harris Lamb, who let the dark store unit, said the transaction had been made in six weeks “This has been a fast transaction for the business, which was keen to be in situ as soon as possible,” said Harris Lamb associate Tom Morley, who oversaw the deal.
Iceland’s online delivery service was named the UK’s best in the annual Which? supermarket survey in February.
The popularity of the service was not enough to stop Iceland’s like-for-like sales declining by 2.7% in the latest financial year. But CEO Malcolm Walker said it had helped “deliver a moderation” to its falling sales, which declined by 4.4% in 2014-15.
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