Britain’s third largest supermarket chain, Asda, will be cutting hundreds of jobs due to fierce competition from discount rivals in the increasingly challenging grocery sector.

Asda is owned by the world’s biggest retailer Wal-mart, which announced its first ever bulk store closure last week. Sky News has reported that Asda will notify staff this week about the latest round of redundancies, which will mainly centre on the Leeds-based head office.

The cuts will come after the majority of the leading grocery players, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, recorded prediction-beating Christmas trading results.

Asda has not released an update on the festive trading period, and will not comment until its parent company does so next month.

Recent data from Industry Analysts, Kantar Worldpanel, suggests that sales dropped by 3.5% in the 12 weeks to January 3rd, reducing Asda’s share of the grocery market by 0.6% to 16.2%.

Asda said: "It’s well documented that in recent years, customers have radically changed the way they shop.

“We were the first of the 'big four' to recognise this and launch a new strategy in 2013 yet the external pressures have accelerated at an increasingly rapid rate over the last 18 months.

“As a result, the industry faces major challenges and the certainty of permanent structural change. In the context of this, we also have to further change the way we do business.

“Today, we have started to talk to our colleagues in head office functions about what this means for them.

“We have made some difficult but necessary decisions but we must discuss these with our colleagues before we talk publicly."

Sources have commented that the final number of redundancies will remain unclear on Monday morning but that it would likely be "in the hundreds".
Asda employs 170,000 people across the UK, including 3,000 at its head office.