Britains Big Four supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons) continue to reduce the amount of new supermarkets and developments as the grocery pipeline continues to shrink, according to CBRE’s latest analysis of the grocery property market.
The number of abandoned schemes has grown 13.3% since H1 2015 and more closures are expected as consumers shift towards online grocery sales and leases are not renewed at loss making stores.
"In the future, Aldi and Lidl will be the main contributors to the UK grocery pipeline to support their ambitious store targets. Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons are likely to submit significantly fewer planning applications for new stores than in previous years due to their large banks of consented sites,” CBRE said.
The poorer performing hypermarket formats (Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s) have been focusing on adapting existing stores to address excess space (eg. Burton/ Dorothy Perkins trials in Tesco and Decathlon in Asda). Sainsbury’s successfully introduced concessions such as Timpson, Jessops and Argos as a way to introduce more shoppers into stores and have recently succeeded in a £1.3bn bid to acquire Home Retail Group, following the separate sale of Homebase.
