SUPERMARKET chain Wm Morrison is to launch online grocery shopping for customers in large swathes of England but has declined to confirm whether it will extend the service to Scotland, where it already punches above its weight as the market number three.
Morrisons, which is the fourth largest grocer UK-wide, ceded further ground to its rivals in its latest quarter to November 3, reporting a worse than expected 2.4% fall in like-for-like sales.
The company said it still expected underlying sales to grow over Christmas, driven by promotional deals on the likes of Quality Street chocolates and Baileys liqueur.
The lack of an online grocery service has denied Morrisons access to a rare growth area in an otherwise cut-throat grocery sector. It has reported that some of its cash-strapped shoppers have turned to delivery services operated by other groups to save on transport costs.
Morrisons, headed by Dalton Philips, is to start food deliveries in Warkwickshire in the English Midlands in January. An extension to its home county of Yorkshire will follow.
By the end of 2014, it intends to be delivering to 50% of UK households, including London. But a spokesman declined to say whether Scotland, where the Safeway acquisition gave it a strong presence, would receive the service.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article