Discount grocers build up new stores alongside market share

In the search for savings in a colder economic climate, a growing number of consumers are switching to the discount supermarket chains for their weekly shop.

This has meant increased revenues for the likes of Lidl and Aldi. But it has also brought new opportunities for construction work as the discount grocery chains expand and reconfigure their estates to meet growing demand.

German-owned Lidl GB recently said it was seeing an extra 770,000 people shopping in its stores each week compared to a year ago and pointed to a rise in its market share to 7.4%. In October alone, consumers switched £58 million of spending from the main four supermarkets to Lidl stores.

Busy store development programme

Brisk business at the tills at Lidl is being accompanied by a busy store development programme. Today, the company has over 935 stores and it is on track to have 1,100 stores by the end of 2025.

The new stores are typically between 18,000-26,500 sq ft with 100-plus car parking spaces and on sites of 1.5-plus acres or up to four acres for mixed-use schemes. Cities where the group is interested in acquiring sites include Bristol, Derby, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Southampton, Swansea, Birmingham, Sheffield, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.

Glenigan data highlights numerous examples of new construction projects nationwide which Lidl is currently progressing. At the World of Water Aquatic Centres site in Watford, detailed plans have been submitted for a £3.24 million supermarket covering 1,500 sq m which will involve the demolition of an existing building, and where work is due to start in autumn next year and run for six months (Project ID: 22326262).

Up the M6 at Hanley near Stoke on Trent, detailed plans have been granted and a main contractor is set to be appointed in the new year for a £2.5 million Lidl supermarket on a scheme which includes infrastructure and access roads (Project ID: 19058087).

Meanwhile, fellow discount supermarket chain Aldi – which attracted a further 1.5 million extra customers during a recent 12-week period - is also expanding its footprint with new store openings. In October, the group said it planned to open a further 16 stores this year, to add to its existing estate of over 970 stores.

On the lookout for new sites

Aldi, which is also German-owned, is also on the lookout for new sites for stores, typically town-centre or edge-of-centre sites which can accommodate a 20,000 sq ft store and 100 parking spaces. Cities such as Bath and Birmingham are on its shortlist, along with smaller towns such as Penzance and Maidenhead.

Meanwhile, Aldi is also planning to develop new and expanded distribution centres, including facilities in Bedford and Leicestershire.

Glenigan data reflects the busy development programme underway at Aldi. Work is set to start next spring on a £10 million Aldi store, with a coffee drive-thru and car parking at Keighley in West Yorkshire (Project ID: 20124830). Work should also get underway early in the new year on a £1 million extension to create a new Aldi store at Seaton in Devon from a former Co-op store (Project ID: 22156077). Both projects have been granted detailed planning permission and both are at the pre-tender stage.

The medium-term construction work pipeline at Aldi is also promising. Glenigan data shows that the group has submitted detailed plans for a new £3.37 million store in Walsall (Project ID: 20307922), for a £3.42 million store in Boston in Lincolnshire (Project ID: 22361167) and for a £3.75 million store in Hove, near Brighton (Project ID: 21216692). All three schemes are at the pre-tender stage with work set to start on all three early next summer.

Meanwhile as competition across the grocery sector hots up, there are also opportunities for work on smaller ‘convenience stores’ for the major supermarkets. Asda has recently firmed up plans to roll out 300 of its Express convenience stores by the end of 2026, in a market which it believes is set to grow by 13% to over £50 billion by 2027.

The supermarket chain has recently opened an Asda Express store in Tottenham Hale in north London, a £500,000 project which took three months to complete (Project ID: 22370247). Wiltshire, Essex, and Surrey have been confirmed as locations for new stores in 2023.