Up to 600 Rochdale jobs lost as Woolworths goes down

Woolworths is another town centre store threatened by closure.

The Joint Administrators to Woolworths Plc have confirmed that the 807 Woolworths stores will close by 5 January 2009, unless a buyer for the business can be found. Negotiations for the sale of the Woolworths retail business as a going concern continue, but have not yet resulted in a buyer being found. The stores will be closed in tranches of 200, with the Rochdale store closing on 30 December. Up to 600 staff in Rochdale are to lose their jobs.

Woolworths currently employs 22,000 permanent members of staff and 5,000 temporary and seasonal staff. The staff will be retained for a period following the store closures. The distribution centres supporting the stores employ c.500 staff and are likely to close before the end of December. The Administrators are working closely with the Redundancy Payments Office and Job Centre Plus to provide support for all staff, which will include a fast track process for paying redundancy entitlements.

The Administrators revealed that over 300 of the stores are under offer from a range of third parties, and that there is considerable interest in the other 500 stores. The Administrators have also received interest in and offers for the Woolworths brand name, and the Ladybird and Chad Valley brands.

The Closing Down Sale will see new discounts introduced on over 40 million items with discounts of 20-60% across items in all stores. 50 million new stock items including DVDs, CDs and toys will be received into stores this week and further discounts will be applied in due course.

Neville Kahn, Joint Administrator comments: “Whilst negotiations for the sale of Woolworths’ retail arm remain ongoing, and we continue to speak to new interested parties, regrettably we have had to begin a store closure programme. We are extremely grateful to the staff and management for their support throughout this difficult time.

“We are confident that we will sell the leases of the 300 stores currently under offer and are hopeful that our ongoing discussions with other parties will also prove successful.”