Poundland announces closure date for Newtownabbey store
Poundland has confirmed the date when its store at Longwood Retail Park in Newtownabbey will close under a ‘restructuring and recovery’ plan designed to return the business to growth.
The plan, which launched in June, is intended to ‘refocus and simply the business’ after an extended period of under-performance and deliver a financially sustainable operating model.
It includes the closure of 68 stores and, alongside other closures linked to lease expirations, in time, means Poundland expects to operate a network of around 650-700 stores compared to around 800 at the present.
A Poundland spokesperson said colleagues at stores earmarked for closure under the recovery plan had been informed of their store’s status in June and that the company has this week completed briefing colleagues on specific closing dates for the first 25 locations.
The Poundland store at Longwood Retail Park, along with the store in Rushmere Retail Park, Craigavon are included in the list of the first 25 closures.
They are both to close on Sunday, August 17.
Poundland’s retail director Darren MacDonald said: "It is of course, sincerely regrettable that our recovery plans include any store closures, but sadly that’s necessary if we’re to achieve our goal of securing the future of thousands of jobs and hundreds of stores.
"It goes without saying that we will work closely with colleagues through a formal consultation process in stores scheduled to close, exploring any suitable alternative roles. That work is underway.”
The Longwood Retail Park store opened on December 2021 and at the time was heralded as one of its largest stores in Northern Ireland.