Shoprite opens 14 new stores in one week

Cape Town - The Shoprite Group [JSE:SHP] on Thursday announced that it had opened 14 new South African stores in 6 provinces.

The group's share price remained relatively flat on the back of the news, ending the day trading at R203.62 a share, just down from R203.81 at its close on Wednesday. 

In a statement, Shoprite said the 14 stores would "create more than 820 new job opportunities". 

The stores include Shoprite, Checkers, Checkers Hyper, Usave and LiquorShop outlets. 

The Shoprite Group has a total of 2 689 outlets across 15 different African countries and currently employees 143 802 employees.

Growing trend

Shoprite said it was on track to open 82 stores in the 2017/18 financial year, ten more than the 72 stores it opened in the 2016/2017 year.

 “Over the past year 2.4% more customers voted with their feet and wallets to buy at our stores and we processed over 1 billion transactions. This proves that we are giving our customers what they need at prices they can afford,” said the group's strategic expansion programme CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said.

In August, when the group announced its results for the year ended July 2 2017, Engelbrecht said the group was "healthy and doing well across multiple brands and regions". 

• READ: Shoprite resilient despite rand, recession woes

Of the group's 14 new stores, 8 are LiquorShop outlets, two are Usave shops, two are Checkers, and two are Shoprite stores. 

The group on Thursday also published its latest B-BBEE annual compliance report, which gave it the status of a level-eight contributor. 

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