It has been announced that supermarket chain Morrisons is to sell its 140 M local convenience stores for around £25 million.
Mike Greene, who appeared on Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire and who has spent 20 years on the board of the Association of Convenience Stores and founded the Association of Retail Newsagents, will takeover the stores and re-brand the chain as “My Local”.
This will include opening 10 shops which are presently closed – Teddington, Littlehampton, Shirley, Edinburgh, Sutton Coldfield, Camberley, Walton-on-Thames, Ramsgate, Rayleigh and Paignton. All 2,300 staff will remain employed with an extra 200 jobs to be created due to the re-opening of the above stores. However, five M local stores will remain with Morrisons, either on petrol forecourts or turned into small supermarkets.
The first M local store opened in 2011 after the company purchased a group of stores under pressure due to having virtually no presence online or in convenience, which is why new chairman Andy Higginson put a stop on expanding, saying 30% of the stores were “not working”.
