Asda has revealed it is entering into consultation with staff at its Enfield Home Shopping Centre distribution facility in North London as it plans to close the site.
The retailer has opened two new fully automated shopping centres in London in the past 18 months – including one in Heston in July last year and one in London two months ago.
The Enfield site opened in 2010, employs 261 colleagues and delivers home shopping to 4,500 customers a week.
Asda claims the new sites have created over 700 new jobs whilst also providing increased capacity, improved accuracy and faster fulfilment to meet customer demand.
Simon Gregg, vice president of grocery home shopping at Asda, said that the Enfield site simply wasn’t viable any longer. “Despite great efforts by our colleagues at Enfield, restrictions on the site mean we are not able to make the necessary further improvements to meet the speed of fulfilment and product ranges that our customers now expect. Therefore, we’ve entered a consultation process with colleagues on proposals to close the facility,” he said.
The company is considering expanding capacity in its Heston centre and discussing options for colleagues to take on roles in other neighbouring stores. “Whilst conversations about change are never easy, we would always work to find new opportunities for impacted colleagues, with redundancy as a last resort,” said Gregg.
Image credit: Asda
