Aldi store expansion plans: is your area on the list?
Aldi has pledged to almost double the number of shops in its estate within the M25.
The discounter is regularly the cheapest for a basket of groceries in our monthly price comparison, and was the only supermarket to be named a Which? Recommended Provider for in-store shopping this year.
Read on to get the details on Aldi's store plans.
Do you have an Aldi near you?
Aldi has more than 990 stores in the UK currently.
Most are located in the North West (190), followed by Scotland (103), West Midlands (103), Yorkshire & Humber (87), South East (83), East of England (80), East Midlands (79), North East (62), Wales (62) and London (61).
Aldi doesn't currently offer an online grocery service, but it has a click and collect service at some stores. So if you want to shop at Aldi, you'll need a local store or be able to travel to one.
Where will the new Aldi shops be located?
Aldi plans to almost double its 60-strong London store estate by opening at least 60 new branches, creating 2,400 jobs.
It wants to open big 20,000 sq ft shops with 100 parking spaces and is looking for locations on a ‘prominent main road with good visibility and access’.
The discounter also wants to open small stores around London, and is on the lookout for sites to accommodate its smaller Aldi Local store format, which are around 5,000 sq ft in size.
Aldi’s larger format shops tend to have a similar layout, and include a bakery, produce, meat and poultry, fish, general merchandise and toiletries sections, while its local branches have a much smaller selection of items, with more of a focus on grab-and-go items.
It's targeting empty office blocks and new housing locations, as well as town-centre or edge-of-centre sites.
- Find out more: best cheap supermarket food and drink
When will the stores open?
Which? asked Aldi for a timeline of when customers can expect the new shops to open, but it told us it's dependent on when it can acquire new sites to build them on.
To help it find suitable sites, Aldi is offering property agents a finder’s fee of either 1.5% of a freehold price, or 10% of the first year’s rent for leasehold sites, for recommending a previously unknown site.
Giles Hurley, CEO of Aldi UK, said: ‘Demand for Aldi has never been higher – there are still some towns and areas that either don’t have access to an Aldi or have capacity for additional stores. To meet that demand, we need to open more stores and it’s our mission to keep driving our ambitious expansion plan to achieve that.’
Other prioroty locations
Aldi has plans to invest more than £400m in store development which includes improving exisiting sites and opening news stores over the coming year, including these priority locations:
- Barry
- Basildon
- Bath
- Birmingham
- Bonnyrigg
- Cathcart (Glasgow)
- Chesterfield
- Chesterton
- Dorchester
- Drylaw (Edinburgh)
- Formby
- Harrogate
- Liverpool
- Ossett
- Oxford
- Penwortham
- Rayleigh
- Saltash
- Scarborough
- St Albans
- Sunderland
- Torquay
- Tunbridge Wells
- Upton
- Warwick
- Wellingborough
- Wilmslow
- Wigan
- Worthing
- York
- Find out more: the best UK cities for shopping
Where is Iceland closing stores?
Iceland, meanwhile, will be closing half a dozen of its stores across the country as part of cost-cutting plans.
The frozen food specialist permanently shuttered its Chineham Shopping Centre, Basingstoke, and Mill Lane, Bromsgrove, shops in February, which will be followed by its store in the White Rose Centre, Rhyl, on 14 March.
Its South Street store in Newport on the Isle of Wight, and St Catherine’s Place, Bedminster, branch close on 25 March, and the Deiniol Centre, Bangor, branch will close on 27 March.
Iceland told Which?: ‘Across Iceland and The Food Warehouse we have a portfolio of over 1,000 UK stores, and our retail estate has grown by nearly 200 stores over the last ten years.
‘We typically open more than 20 new stores each year, creating many new jobs and contributing to the growth of local economies. At the same time, we continually review the retail experience offered to our customers and have always made a small number of store closures every year, as local shopping patterns change, and shop leases expire.’
- Find out more: how hundreds of Iceland shoppers rate its stores and website
What do people think of shopping with Aldi and Iceland?
Aldi was voted joint second-best in-store supermarket in our annual survey and is the only supermarket to have been named a Which? Recommended Provider this year.
It performed well on the quality of its products, with four out of five stars, and got the same high score for value for money.
Aldi has also been named the cheapest supermarket in our monthly analysis for the last nine months.
As for Iceland, shoppers rated it joint fourth place in our latest survey, alongside Lidl. It doesn't quite match Lidl or Aldi's four out of five stars for value for money though, with three stars for this measure, while it came joint second place for online shopping, along with Waitrose.
- Find out more: our supermarket price comparison
Which other retailers are closing shops?
Iceland is not the only retailer to have announced store closures in recent months.
- Boots is closing three stores by this spring.
- B&Q will close eight stores in Asda stores by 11 March.
- M&S will be opening 20 new stores but shuttering 67 of its underperforming full-line stores in high streets within the next five years.
- Lloyds Pharmacy is withdrawing its services from 237 stores inside Sainsbury’s supermarkets.
- Paperchase went into administration in February 2023 and will therefore permanently shut its 106 high street stores.
This story has been updated since first published. The orignal story mentioned Aldi was spending £400m revamping stores. We've clarified it is spending £400m on refurbishment and expanding stores to other areas.
