New supermarket chain Haldanes Stores has taken over a Lincolnshire store to open its first outlet in England.
The store is in Tattershall and employs 47 staff, all of which will keep their job, and until Thursday was owned by the Co-op and trading as Somerfield. It is 9,220 square feet and will bear the Haldanes Stores fascia by the end of January 2010.
Haldanes Stores is headed up by Arthur Harris who hopes to have 50 mid-size supermarkets operating throughout the UK under the new fascia in four years time.
Four Somerfield stores that were owned by The Co-op have already been taken over in Scotland. Harris said: “We are also currently negotiating for a large number of other stores throughout the UK. We are in preliminary discussions with other supermarket operators throughout Great Britain as potential acquisitions.”
The new chain is trading on its “Refreshingly Local” ticket and is emphasising that it sources some 35 per cent of its food and drink from producers local to its stores nationwide. It is the first mid-sized supermarket to open up in the UK in almost three decades and Harris believes it will fill a gap for medium-sized stores in the marketplace that has opened up since Tesco acquired William Low in the 1990s.
