John Wood Somerfield is accelerating its refit programme for its Somerfield stores with chief executive Alan Smith aiming for 150 to be completed during its financial year ending next April. Smith said the company was committed to carrying out 100 refits, but hoped it could increase that to 150. "The only constraint is human resources, there's no lack of cash. We are limited by the number of refits we can run at the same time," he said. Smith said 46 stores were trading in the new corporate style and were recording an average sales uplift of 22.5%. Further honing of individual stores' offer is being planned by a format development team created when the group set up a separate Somerfield business unit in February. The team has segmented the portfolio into seven formats with appropriate ranging, pricing, promotion and service strategies, and will make a presentation to the group board this week. Smith said all the formats would trade under the Somerfield fascia, although management were looking into sub brands. He said: "Sub brands would introduce extra complexity and costs, and I would need to be satisfied that the benefits outweighed them." The group also intends to refit its Kwik Save estate, but Smith said more work needed to be done before it could start. A new Kwik Save store was opened in Sale in the autumn, but Smith said it was "over-designed" and needed some refinement. "We will take the learnings from that store and trial them in six concept stores between now and the end of the year. "We intended to carry out refits at the same rate as the Somerfield stores, but not until we have a concept that works," said Smith. Smith was speaking after Somerfield unveiled yearly pre-tax profit of £22.1m for the year to April 27 compared to a pre-tax loss of £13.1m, and like-for-like annual sales up 2.5% for Kwik Save, 1.4% for Somerfield and 1.8% for the group. However, like for like sales figures for the first eight weeks of this year were -1.4% for Somerfield, -3.5% for Kiwk Save and -2.2% for the group. {{NEWS }}

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