Yorkshire picked for Iceland’s warehouse store experiment
FOOD retailer Iceland is launching its latest offering in Yorkshire as it attempts to combat competition from value retailers Aldi and Lidl.
The company’s The Food Warehouse brand is taking space at three of the Derwent group’s retail parks in Hull, Warrington and Manchester.
The warehouse-style stores will be located in out-of-town parks such as Anlaby Retail Park in Hull, where The Food Warehouse is taking nearly 10,000 sq ft on a 10-year lease.
The site is expected to open in October 2016.
The Food Warehouse will also open at the White City Retail Park in Trafford, Manchester; Anlaby Retail Park in Hull; and JunctionNINE Retail Park, Warrington.
The first The Food Warehouse store was launched in 2014, and has expanded to 19 units across the UK. The stores which are often at least twice the size of a typical Iceland store, offer customers a wide range of fresh, chilled, frozen and branded grocery products.
The Food Warehouse managing director Richard Walker commented:”We’re delighted with the three new sites we’ve secured with The Derwent Group. It’s no secret that the grocery market has changed as of late, and our new store formats perfectly compliment the change with our low price and quality produce shopping environments. All three sites will welcome our new format stores which have been designed with natural tones and textures to help showcase the quality of our products.”
James Maule-Ffinch, senior asset manager at The Derwent Group said: “The Food Warehouse coming to our White City, Anlaby and JunctionNINE Retail Parks is fantastic for the schemes as a whole. We’ve agreed a number of cross-scheme deals with retailers recently including Guess How Much and M&S Foodhall and we’re continuing to stay close to retailers to understand what their national and, more particularly, their northern requirements are given the spread of our extensive retail portfolio.”
