14 Shop Talk
he Co-operative Group’s new head office in Manchester has been declared the most environmentally-friendly building in the world. The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) gave One Angel Square a score of 95.16% – the highest ever awarded. The building was officially opened by Her Majesty The Queen, accompanied by His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, on 14 November. The award was given for the building’s many environmentally friendly features, which include power generated from crops grown on the Group’s farms; heating and cooling the premises by drawing air below the basement and redistributing it at the earth’s core temperature; and a double skin façade that acts as a ‘duvet’ to insulate the offices in the winter and ventilate it in the summer. Asda has reported a 0.3% increase in like-for-like sales for the third quarter of this year (13 weeks to 4 October) -– its twelfth consecutive quarter of positive growth.
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In addition, the retailer has outlined its three strategic priorities for the next five years.
It aims to improve the core business, extend its reach and expand the brand into new markets by significantly lowering prices, further increasing quality and giving more people the opportunity to shop through the physical development of stores and over 1,000 Click and Collect locations. To achieve this it plans to invest £1bn in
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lowering prices and £250m in quality, style and design, between now and 2018. Asda is planning to break into parts of the UK where its market share is low but customer demand is high, particularly in London and the South East. Its online business remains a core part of its growth strategy and is expected to generate £3bn annual sales by 2018.
Waitrose is to open six new branches at Welcome Break sites nationwide within the next four months, as it ramps up its expansion plans with the motorway services operator. The new branches follow a deal agreed by Waitrose and Welcome Break earlier in the year which extended the successful franchise partnership for a further ten
years. The six new stores will create 120 jobs and mean Waitrose now has 25 branches at Welcome Break sites. Waitrose and Welcome Break have been steadily rolling out new branches across the UK since the partnership began in 2009 and have committed to opening more Waitrose shops to meet customer demand. Business Green reports that Marks and Spencer and Starbucks are trialling a new delivery fleet that promises to dramatically cut refrigeration emissions by almost a fifth. Cooling systems in the six Frostcruise vehicles pipe liquid nitrogen from an on- board tank, where it is stored at -196°C, through a heat exchanger with a large surface area.
This causes the liquid nitrogen to evaporate and high-velocity fans circulate the cold air around the truck’s container.
Barr Construction has won a contract to build a 30,000sqft Waitrose store in Chester. The store will be Barr’s fifth Waitrose project in the UK, following others in Helensburgh, Stirling, Walton- Le-Dale and Newton Mearns. Work is expected to begin in the spring.
Iceland Foods has acquired the seven Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland, previously operated by its franchisee AIM Group, for an undisclosed sum. All staff in the stores have been offered the opportunity to transfer to Iceland. Sainsbury’s says its new supermarket in Leicester, which opened at the end of November, is its most eco-friendly store to date. The store has a number of environmentally friendly features including ‘Triple Zero’ – zero carbon emissions from all operational energy used; zero waste goes to landfill; and the store has zero impact on the water usage of the local catchment area because of its ‘Water Neutral’ status.
In addition, the equivalent amount of zero carbon biogas, required for the store each year, will be imported into the network from one of the retailer’s Dairy Development Group farmer’s anaerobic digestion facilities in West Sussex, creating a closed loop. The water required for the store will be met through water efficient measures and infrastructure, as well as an offsetting partnership in the local community.
Swep ACR News January 2014
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