Co-op returns to Birtley with purchase of Netto store

Graham Soult

Retail consultant, writer, blogger; helping retailers via CannyInsights.com and CannySites.com. Say hello on Twitter at @soult!

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10 Responses

  1. Ian Swindall says:

    Aminita will be pleased as she has her wish, Morrisons have acquired the adjoining sites and plan to build a brand new supestore in Birtley.

  2. Sean says:

    with the co-op distribution centre only half a mile away it should be in the cheapest price band. have any of you ever shopped in a tesco metro or a sainsburys local, if so you will see the co-op in not at all expensive , ok they cant compete with the large superstores on range but they can on pricing

  3. Aminita says:

    It’s a shame that co-op have stepped in with this store, as Valerie says the OFT are a joke when you see where Tesco are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want. It’s not just their larger branded stores everywhere either, they now own the Mills group sites and are branding them as One Stop.

    Asda would have been perfect for the Birtley site, and you only have to go into their newly rebranded Old Fold store to see how popular a replacement it is.

    We can only hope that Morrisons aquire the old Morrison’s construction site behind the old Somerfield store and provide a decent store in the area. Co-op are rediculously expensive when compared with Netto prices, but maybe this will be of benefit to the other smaller local shops on Durham Road, such as Birtley Convenience which is only a minute from the current Netto store.

    People need to vote with their feet.

  4. Valerie Beal says:

    Agreed with John – I just fail to see why ASDA couldn’t trade at the Birtley site – they have a number of stores very close together. One old Netto store is now open as ASDA in very close proximity to another new store. The OFT is a bit of a joke – if you are Tesco you can open virtually anywhere – look at some big cities with stores in walking distance of each other. Birtley is an area where many people are on low incomes – they need a cheaper supermarket and it would be popular. A lot of people use the bus just go along to the local shops – many of them living in the large number of sheltered housing complexes for the elderly.

  5. Keighley is one of those that they’ll struggle to sell as it has every major retailer within a mile of each other.

    Cant see who will take it.

  6. John says:

    Bet Birtley shoppers will be THRILLED at the overpriced Co-Op opening in what was a discount trading outlet. The co-op is twice the price on many brands that Netto sold. I find it very odd, and I have said this before, that this could not be an Asda Supermarket, considering that Netto Gosforth is going to be an Asda even though we have a 24 hour one less than 10 minutes walk away and there will be two at opposite ends of Cowpen Road in Blyth once that Netto converts.

    • Graham Soult says:

      That’s a very fair point John. I suppose the danger is that the people of Birtley might have ended up with nothing at all had the Co-op not come in. But yes, I think ideally a Lidl, Aldi or even a UGO would have been a better fit in meeting local people’s shopping needs.

  7. Ian Swindall says:

    There were only 6 Netto’s left unsold before this transaction, I suspect that you have overlooked the 2 additional stores bought by Morrisons last month (Little Hulton (Salford) and Houghton Regis (Dunstable). This leaves only three more stores to sell- Wallasey, Keighley and Barrow in Furness.

  1. July 1, 2011

    […] Group has acquired 20 sites, which it has now converted to its UGO brand, while Iceland and the Co-op have each bought three. This means that of the 47 Netto sites that overlapped with existing Asda […]

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