The Big Food Group has announced plans to step up its refurbishment programme in an attempt to turn around continued falling sales.
The refurbishment programme forms part of the plan to transform Iceland into a convenience store selling fruit and vegetables, magazines and cigarettes alongside chilled ready meals and frozen foods.
The programme will cover 200 of the group's stores at a cost of around £100million, last year the group's spending was £68m.
So far only 33 out of 760 stores have been refurbished, but those converted are showing increases in profit of approximately 14 per cent.
This year Iceland's pre-tax profits have fallen from £43m to £37.1m with group sales declining £100m to £5.1bn. And chief executive, Bill Grimsey admitted that sales at Iceland had been hit by a decision to cut promotions at Iceland in the first half of the year, a move that proved unpopular.
One analyst said: Iceland need like-for-like sales growth and it isn't clear whether a store refit programme can deliver that.' Grimsey must act quickly as the pension gap grew from £25m to £154m last year. He commented: 'If I had pixie dust I would wave it over the whole estate and we would have sales growth.'