M&S has revealed that it plans to invest £30m in developing its store portfolio across Scotland.
The investment includes the opening of five new outlets and the expansion of existing sites over the next eighteen months.
The plans include £15m for the retailer’s Aberdeen Union Square store, which will be doubled in size to offer a market-style food hall with new features such as a flower shop, a cheese barge, larger in-store bakery, and a dedicated wine shop. There will also be bigger clothing, home and beauty departments.
Alongside a new M&S foodhall coming to its Linlithgow site later this month, a new full-line store in Dundee’s Gallagher Retail Park is on track to open this summer. M&S will also open in Largs for the first time, with a new foodhall due in early 2025.
M&S noted that Scotland is also an important sourcing location with 2,500 local farms in its supply chain and long-standing partnerships with companies such as Kettle Produce, McSween and Scottish Sea Farms. Many Scottish-sourced product lines are sold not just in 94 stores in Scotland but across its wider network of stores across the UK and beyond.
Sacha Berendji, M&S Operations Director, said: “This is our biggest ever investment in Scotland, putting £30m into transforming the shopping experience for customers in Aberdeen, Largs, Dundee and Linlithgow – bringing new jobs across the country with bigger, better, fresh-market style foodhalls and new opportunities for Scottish shoppers to access our best-ever, most inspiringly presented clothing, home and beauty range.
“Our investment in Scotland goes beyond new stores with M&S sourcing more Scottish produce than ever before, through strong partnerships with local producers. Around 2,500 Scottish farms, sea farms and fisheries supply us with great quality products, many supplied beyond Scotland to M&S stores across the UK. Our commitment to Scotland has never been stronger.”
The Scottish investment is part of the group’s store rotation programme designed to ensure it has “the right stores, in the right place with the right space”. M&S is aiming to rotate from a base of 247 stores across the UK to 180 higher quality, higher productivity full-line stores that sell its clothing, home and food ranges, while also opening over 100 bigger food sites by its 2027/28 financial year.
Last week, M&S reported better-than-expected sales figures for the Christmas trading period, driven by market-leading growth in its food division.
NAM Implications:
- Clearly, M&S is moving closer to its markets, both in sourcing and retail…
- Therefore opportunities for local suppliers and local initiatives..?
