SUPERMARKET group Waitrose is to increase its selling space by 20 per cent after announcing a deal to buy 19 stores from Morrisons.
Morrisons is selling the outlets to satisfy conditions imposed by the Competition Commission when it approved the £3bn takeover of Safeway.
The acquisition, which takes Waitrose into new areas in the north of England and Wales, is the largest undertaken by the John Lewis Partnership, which operates the 144-strong supermarket chain.
All but one of the stores, including one in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, being sold are Safeway-branded, with the conversion process expected to be completed in time for the Christmas season.
Waitrose, which recently announced record sales and profits, will be hoping to repeat the process that saw 11 Somerfield stores acquired and then converted into the Waitrose brand in the spring of 2000.
As well as the store in Harrogate, the other stores to be converted into Waitrose outlets are at Sandbach, Abergavenny, Hitchin, Swaffham, Barry, Otley, Dartford, Lincoln, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Willerby, Rushden, Fulham, Towcester, Newport, in Shropshire, Worthing and Farnham.
The one Morrisons outlet being sold is in Southport.
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