Iceland's chief executive Bill Grimsey hopes to transform the chain into the Tesco of high street retailing. His three-year strategy aims to improve availability, customer service and to exploit links with wholesaler Booker and foodservice firm Woodward. The Extra format will be ditched and Iceland will segment stores and tailor the core offer to particular formats. There are also plans to open 80 new Iceland stores and a promise to improve its "incomplete" home shopping offer with the aim of stealing a 5% share of the market. "The brand is not an issue on the web site, but people don't use it because it does not satisfy their primary shopping need," said Grimsey. Plans to use the 180 Booker warehouses as picking centres will be developed with two trials continuing in Chester and Birmingham, followed by another in the south-east of England which will be tested early next year. Other plans for Booker included boosting its share of the delivered wholesale business from 6% to 12% by increasing the number of retailers under the Premier fascia from 500 to 2,000. Grimsey also promised to be more creative in product development but said innovations such as the all-organic ranges would be scaled back to a small part of the offer. His comments came as the group reported pre-exceptional profits down to £40m in the 15 months to March 31, against £64m in the 12 months to January 2000, on sales up £577m to £2.5bn. Like-for-like sales were up a marginal 0.8%. The results follow three profit warnings earlier this year which sent the share price plummeting. Grimsey's strategic plan for recovery includes the aim of growing sales by 15% which analysts said was probably achievable. However, one labelled it a "not particularly challenging target". He added: "I didn't think Grimsey was terribly convincing. The strategy was just basic stuff and quite wishy-washy. "He should have come up with more detail by this time." {{NEWS }}

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