SUPERMARKET chain Iceland is closing two stores starting in days as shoppers share their devastation.
The frozen food specialist is shutting a location in Margate on the Kent coast on June 21.
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Meanwhile, a further branch will close for good in Inverness, Scotland, on July 12.
The retailer said in a statement that staff at both sites have been offered roles at surrounding stores “where possible”.
But news of the closures has still been met with heartbreak from locals and shoppers.
One, posting on Facebook about the Margate closure, said: “Margate is losing everything bit by bit.”
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Another added: “Can the town centre get any worse with empty buildings.”
Commenting on the Inverness branch shutting, one shopper said: “Very sad to hear this news.”
Another chipped in: “I’m so gutted.”
The closure of the Inverness branch means there will no longer be any Iceland stores in the Scottish city.
The nearest Iceland store will be in Aberdeen while there is a Food Warehouse, run by Iceland, in Inverness’s Telford Street.
It’s not the first store closure made by Iceland in the past few months.
It pulled down the shutters permanently on its site in Welling at the start of the year.
A site in Borehamwood and another in Exeter permanently shut around the same time.
The latest closures means Iceland has shut more than 20 stores since the start of 2023.
It’s worth bearing in mind retailers often shut branches in underperforming areas and open them where they think they’ll get more footfall and sales.
For example, it’s not all bad new for Iceland as in 2024 it announced plans to open more of its Food Warehouse format stores across the UK.
Food Warehouse stores, run by the Iceland Foods Group, are generally larger than Iceland shops and usually found in retail parks.
OTHER RETAIL CLOSURES
The retail sector has struggled in recent years due to the onset of online shopping and lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic.
Higher inflation since 2022 has also hit shoppers’ budgets while businesses have struggled with higher wage, tax and energy costs.
The Centre for Retail Research has described the sector as going through a “permacrisis” since the 2008 financial crash.
Figures from the Centre also show 34 retail companies operating multiple stores stopped trading in 2024, leading to the closure of 7,537 shops.
This was the highest number of stores affected in a calendar year since the Centre started collecting this data in 2007.
On top of these more than 7,500 stores, over 11,000 independent shops closed in 2024.
This is in addition to almost 7,800 independent stores that closed in 2023.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that more than half of companies planned to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms also found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.
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