Asda to invest £700 million on stores and online sales
24 Apr 2013
Supermarket Asda has pledged to create 2,500 jobs in the UK after it unveiled a 4.5 per cent increase in total sales to £22.8 billion last year.
The new jobs would come with a £700 million investment the company planned to make.
The US retail giant, which recorded double-digit growth in its annual online sales in 2012, said it was now the UK's second biggest online grocer. The demand for online shopping continued to grow, and the focus was now on "accelerating its multi-channel business,'' it added.
The supermarket, last year, enhanced its home shopping capacity as it opened a third purpose-built picking centre in Nottingham, which created 600 jobs. The company also extended its delivery slots to between 6am and 11pm, expanding its online product range to over 25,000 items.
According to Asda, it was also investing in click and collect facilities for clothing and general merchandise across its 568 stores, helping customers to collect grocery from almost 200 outlets by the end of the year.
However, it continued to maintain that bricks and mortar stores would remain central to its operations.
As a part of its £700m investment drive, Asda would also introduce same-day grocery delivery service in the UK.
The same-day service would be on trial from next month, with customers able to collect their order from stores.
Asda would be the first among the UK's major supermarket retailers to provide such a service. According to analysts, the development underlined the growing importance of online retailing to the food industry.
Tesco chief executive Philip Clarke last week announced that the retailer was writing down the value of land earmarked for future stores by £804 million as it wanted to focus investment on its convenience stores and digital business, as against traditional supermarkets.
Asda, the UK's second-largest food retailer after Tesco, also was looking to unveil click-and-collect service across its UK stores. Customers would be able to collect non-food and clothing products from all 568 stores, even as the number of Asda sites offering a click-and-collect service for food shopping would double to around 200 in 2013.
