SAINSBURY’S has issued a major update regarding the closure of more Argos stores.

The supermarket chain, which owns Argos, plans to shut nine more standalone locations in the upcoming financial year. 

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This move is part of an ongoing strategy to transition the brand’s presence from traditional high street stores to integrated concessions within Sainsbury’s supermarkets.

It comes as Sainsbury’s interim results released yesterday showed sales at Argos slipped by 5% in the 28 weeks to September 14.

Sainsbury’s general merchandise and clothing sales also declined by 1.5% during this period.

Argos’ owner added: “For the full financial year we expect to open 13 Argos stores within Sainsbury’s and close nine standalone stores.”

Sainsbury’s has not yet disclosed the locations of the next round of Argos store closures.

The company also stated that it has not yet informed employees at the stores that will be affected.

A spokesperson for Argos told The Sun: “The transformation of our Argos store and distribution network has been progressing at pace for several years now, improving availability, convenience and service for customers.”

“As part of this, we are continuing to open new Argos stores and collection points in many of our Sainsbury’s supermarkets, enabling customers to purchase thousands of technology, home and toy products from Argos while picking up their groceries.”

Argos has closed dozens of stores over the last two years.

Since March 2023, Sainsbury’s has reduced the number of standalone Argos stores by 72, down to 213 from 385.

However, it has increased the number of Argos stores within Sainsbury’s supermarkets by 22 – from 424 to 446.

The most recent closure occurred on October 17, when the Argos store in Plymouth city centre permanently shut its doors.

Before this, the Argos store in Greenock, Inverclyde, unexpectedly ceased operations on September 14.

Last year all 34 Argos stores in the Republic of Ireland were shut down.

The company blamed the closure of the stores on the investment required to develop and modernise the Irish part of its business as “not viable”.

HISTORY OF ARGOS

FOUNDED in 1972 by Richard Tompkins, Argos revolutionised the British retail landscape with its unique catalogue-based shopping model.

The first store opened in Canterbury, Kent and quickly expanded, becoming a household name.

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Customers could browse the extensive Argos catalogue, fill out a purchase slip, and collect their items from the in-store collection point.

The retailer was sold to British American Tobacco Industries in 1979 for £32million before being demerged and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1990.

In April 1998, the company was acquired by GUS plc.

Throughout the decades, Argos adapted to changing consumer habits, embracing e-commerce early on and launching its website in 1999.

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This allowed customers to reserve items online for in-store pick-up, blending the convenience of digital shopping with the immediacy of physical retail.

By 2006, Argos became part of the Home Retail Group which was demerged from its parent GUS plc.

At the time, Home Retail Group also owned Homebase and Habitat.

In 2016, Argos, along with its Home Retail Group sister brand Habitat, was acquired by Sainsbury’s.

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Since the acquisition, the Argos brand has been integrated into Sainsbury’s operations, significantly expanding its presence through dedicated concessions within Sainsbury’s supermarkets across the UK.

However, due to declining sales, Sainsbury’s discontinued Argos’ iconic printed catalogue in 2020.

Despite these setbacks, Argos has remained true to its roots, offering a wide range of products from toys and electronics to furniture and jewellery.

SALES UP AT SAINSBURY’S

Despite a decline in sales for both Argos and Sainsbury’s general merchandise and clothing, grocery sales surged by 5% in the 28 weeks leading up to September 14.

The retailer said it was boosted by strong Taste the Difference premium range sales and Nectar membership pricing.

Simon Roberts, chief executive of Sainsbury’s, said: “Our food business is going from strength to strength and we’re making the biggest market share gains in the industry, with continued strong volume growth.

“More and more customers are coming to us for their big food shop, recognising our winning combination of value, quality and service.

“As we head into the festive season, there is real energy and excitement at Sainsbury’s and Argos, and we’re expecting another strong performance.”

Sainsbury’s total underlying pre-tax profit was up 4.7% to £356million.

The supermarket chain is also expected to open 13 new supermarkets in the coming months.

Ten of these new stores, scheduled to open soon, were acquired from DIY retailer Homebase, while the remaining three were purchased from Co-op Food.

However, the boss of the supermarket giant also warned that shoppers will face higher food prices after the Budget’s tax raid on employers.

PRICES TO RISE

Last week, Rachel Reeves hiked the employer rate of National Insurance (NI) from 13.8% to 15%.

She also announced a reduction to the threshold at which businesses start paying NI contributions from £9,100 to £5,000.

It’s estimated that the move will raise £25billion – the equivalent of around £800 per employee for each firm.

Businesses, particularly within the hospitality sector, have warned that the increased financial burden could lead to higher operating costs, which may ultimately be passed on to consumers through price rises.

Mr Roberts said the NI hike would cost Sainsbury’s an extra £140million.

His comments come after Wetherspoons and Marks & Spencer warned of a combined £160million hit from the Chancellor’s decision to increase employer contributions.

Mr Roberts said: “It will lead to inflation and it’s pretty clear it’s going to come pretty fast.

“Given the low margins of the industry, there isn’t the capacity to absorb this level of un­expected cost inflation.”

Asda has also warned about rising prices.

The Entertainer has scrapped plans to open two new stores due to the extra costs associated with the NIC hike.

On Tuesday, the chief executive of Primark’s parent company, Associated British Foods, said he felt “the weight of tax rises” in the Budget was falling on the UK high street.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also said last week that the Treasury’s sharp increase in spending would lead to higher inflation in the coming months.

Despite official figures from October showing that inflation fell to 1.7%, its lowest level since April 2021, the OBR expects inflation to average 2.5% this year and 2.6% next year.

Stockholm-based Truecaller, known for its apps that help you verify and identify contacts, announced the appointment of Rishit Jhunjhunwala as its group CEO, effective January 9, 2025. Jhunjhunwala is the current Chief Product Officer and Managing Director of India operations.

The posting comes after CEO Alan Mamedi and Chief Strategy Officer Nami Zarringhalam announced their decision to step down from their operational roles. The Stockholm exchange-listed company also rescheduled the publication of its interim report following the changes.

 “I am very excited as well as honoured that the board along with Alan and Nami have appointed me as the CEO… Having worked closely with Alan and Nami since 2015, I know these are big shoes to fill, but I amconfident to continue tirelessly working towards getting us closer to our mission to make future communication more safe and secure,” said Jhunjhunwala, the incoming CEO of Truecaller.

India-born Swedish national

Rishit Jhunjhulwala was born and raised in India. He moved to Sweden, joining Trucaller in 2015 and stayed till 2022. In between, he took on the role of the MD of Truecaller India and has held it since 2021. He is now a Swedish citizen.

ALSO READ | Freshworks layoffs: 660 jobs cut amid widening losses, restructuring

Jhunjhulwala currently looks after two of Truecaller’s major revenue-making arms, advertising and “Truecaller for Business”.

Before joining Truecaller, Jhunjhulwala helped in founding Cloudmagic Inc, the Bengaluru and Florida-based company that operates Newton Mail. He also served as the Vice President of Strategic Programs at then-July Systems, which later got injected into the cloud platform, Cisco Spaces, after its acquisition in 2018. Back in 2000, the incoming Truecaller CEO also co-founded Verity Technologies, a valued-added-service startup in the Indian telecommunications space.

Good morning. Westminster is still trying to digest the news of Donald Trump’s victory in the US election. Keir Starmer has issued a “hearty” congratulations to the president-elect, but there are multiple fronts where the incoming Washington administration will be at odds with London: here’s our guide to those areas of friction.

What survives of the GPP

One of the casualties of Trump’s return is likely to be the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act”, a gargantuan piece of legislation designed to spark a gold rush into American cleantech.

“My plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam. Greatest scam in history, probably,” Trump said in September. “We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”

Closer to home I wondered what happened to the “Green Prosperity Plan”, which was meant to be Labour party’s own version of this.

It wasn’t so long ago that Labour described the GPP as its big economic idea. “Labour’s Green Prosperity Plan is the vehicle through which we will turn Britain’s economy around,” said one slogan. 

But since Keir Starmer won the general election in July, the phrase has fallen into abeyance.

That’s not to say that Labour has dropped the green energy chat. Far from it.

The drive to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030 is one of the defining missions of the new government. (Clean energy was mentioned no fewer than eight times in the King’s Speech.)

But I’m curious — in a nerdy way — about what happened to the language and the mechanics of the thing that used to be the Green Prosperity Plan.

I’ve gone back through the big speeches from the Labour conference in September to see whether Starmer, Rachel Reeves or Ed Miliband used the phrase. They didn’t.

So what happened? 

Until February, the GPP had an eye-watering price tag of £28bn a year, all funded by borrowing. Rewind to last winter and a genuine scrap was taking place inside the shadow cabinet about the size of the green package.

There were those — somewhat to the left in Labour terms — such as Miliband, Louise Haigh and Sue Gray (remember her) who wanted to keep it. 

And then there were the likes of Rachel Reeves and Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney (somewhat to the right in Labour terms) who wanted to rein in the scale and scope of the GPP to avoid lethal headlines and Tory attacks. 

Some shadow ministers wondered why the borrowing was only for green infrastructure rather than for new schools or hospitals or prisons. 

Throughout that long three-month period, the Labour press machine dishonestly insisted no such debate was going on. 

Starmer prevaricated for weeks on end until he made his mind up. 

The volte-face, when it came, was brutal. It involved Starmer and Reeves briefing a bunch of journalists off-camera in a parliamentary room (yes I was there) that the plan would be cut from £140bn over five years to, er, £24bn.

“As conditions change, you adjust your position,” Starmer told the hacks. Interest rates were zero when the policy was first cooked up. Now they were close to 5 per cent. 

And so a scheme which had been similar on scale in GDP/head terms to the huge IRA of Joe Biden (remember him) was slashed to barely a sixth of its original size.

Three existing elements of the plan survived.

1. There would still be a state-owned energy company called GB Energy, costing a one-off £8.3bn over a five-year parliament, to co-invest in renewable energy schemes.

2. There would still be a £7.3bn “national wealth fund” to invest in the decarbonisation of heavy industry. 

3. There would still be a national insulation scheme called the “Warm Homes Plan”, but it would be slashed from £6bn a year to just over £1.3bn a year.

Despite this humiliating U-turn, the Green Prosperity Plan continued to be a major Labour slogan in the run-up to the July election. It was still there in the manifesto document: “At the heart of our approach will be our Green Prosperity Plan”. 

And then the phrase disappeared from use. 

Green energy, energy independence, clean energy, carbon capture are still a major part of the new government’s political narrative. Starmer has staked much of his reputation on hitting the 2030 electricity decarbonisation target despite industry thinking it’s stretching to the point of being virtually impossible. 

So, to some extent, the ditching of the specific phrase “Green Prosperity Plan” is a question of semantics. 

Ask the Labour party what happened and they will say the language changed in favour of a new, more jazzy phrase: “Clean Energy Superpower”. 

And yes, that line was used in Miliband’s conference speech and by the prime minister elsewhere. It was Miliband’s team which came up with the “superpower” language because they thought it sounded more pro-growth and more pro-investment. 

It also played into the feedback from polling firms that “energy independence” is a line which gets traction with the public. 

A Trump retreat from the green agenda could — if anything — give impetus to Europe’s attempts to attract low-carbon investment.

So far so clear. But what has happened in recent weeks to the three constituent parts of what used to be the GPP?

Great British Energy

Ministers still insist that GB Energy will get £8bn of cash over the current five-year parliament, mostly to co-invest in private renewable energy schemes.

But the new state-owned energy company will receive just £100mn in funding for renewables projects — and £25mn of seed capital to establish the company — in the first two years of this parliament, according to last week’s Budget. 

Labour says that the details of more funding will follow in next year’s multiyear spending review. But the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology said it was “disappointed” there wasn’t more initial funding. 

National Wealth Fund

The National Wealth Fund was meant to be a new, standalone body which would help heavy industry decarbonise. 

That’s not what happened. Instead Labour has simply rebranded the UK Infrastructure Bank (set up by Rishi Sunak three years ago) as the National Wealth Fund and promised it some extra cash. 

Rachel Reeves has quietly cut by a fifth the new money she is investing into the NWF from £7.3bn to £5.8bn. 

The Treasury says the missing £1.5bn would still be spent on priority areas. Steel is the obvious one.

Warm Homes

Rachel Reeves used her Budget to announce £3.4bn for the government’s “warm homes” insulation programme over three years. 

The £3.4bn allocation is equivalent to £1.1bn a year. That seems lower than the annual £1.3bn for insulation that Labour promised back in February. 

Government aides say more money will be set out at next year’s spending round covering 2026/7 and 2027/8.

Campaigners say it won’t be clear until then whether Labour will fulfil their previous pledge to spend £13.2bn on energy efficiency over this parliament. 

(That is roughly a doubling of the £6bn the previous Conservative administration had hoped they would spend over the same timeframe.)

One final aside

The original premise of the prosperity plan was — you’ll remember — to borrow £28bn a year for low-carbon schemes. 

Last week, Reeves unveiled a big rise in taxes, but also a jump in borrowing of £32bn a year, equal to 1 per cent of GDP. 

That extra borrowing for capital expenditure will now be distributed right across government priorities rather than the net zero transition.  

And yet that figure seems too close to be a total coincidence. 

Now try this

For some of us, Wednesday was excruciating.

Yes, I tore a muscle playing 5-a-side football and am now housebound. Soothing me through the discomfort is Patterns in Repeat, the beautiful new album by singer-songwriter Laura Marling, who did a superb string of gigs at Hackney Church last week. Our pop critic gave it 4/5 in this review.

Have a lovely weekend.

Top stories today

After many years of the regulatory equivalent of a Gaelic shrug towards the protection market, the Financial Conduct Authority has announced a forthcoming study into the sector taking in many areas, perhaps most notably, the three Cs: commission, competition and charging.

Understandably, this has set many boardrooms a flutter, as the market’s biggest and best advisers, distributors and providers begin to consider the impact of the study and its findings on their business model.

There will be some who are fearful. Any action from the regulator tends to cause worry. Some are thankful, having been calling for an increase in engagement in protection from the regulator for some time.

There are always processes that can be done better, to deliver better products, better services and better outcomes to customers

There are others, like me, who are hopeful. Hopeful that this study will once and for all shine the light on protection that I, and many others like me, think it deserves.

Name a perfectly functioning market and I’ll prepare to be astounded. Nowhere across financial services, retail and beyond will you find a market perfectly in sync with its customers or internal market stakeholders.

There are always processes that can be done better, to deliver better products, better services and better outcomes to customers.

The fast-food market could easily reduce salt, sugar and fat in its foods and maintain its revenues and standing. Indeed, the sugar tax on soft drinks has proven it possible. But it is yet far from common practice.

The UK is one of – if not the – most price-competitive market in the world. We offer cover at a low price – some might say too low

Closer to home, the general insurance  market could, despite regulatory intervention in recent years, ensure all its products deliver value for money on an ongoing basis.

Protection, too, has aspects that could be changed to improve the market and the outcomes it delivers customers. Products could be simpler to understand and deploy to underserved markets. Cover could be more in keeping with modern changing lives – able to flex according to circumstances. Processes at application and claim could be improved from those which, today, are often still legacy; often manual and sometimes opaque.

However, there is masses to celebrate, too. The UK is one of – if not the – most price-competitive market in the world. We offer cover at a low price – some might say too low. We are also continually seeing providers entering new channels and new product lines – helping drive more choice.

This is the growth we need. This is the growth a financially resilient society needs

We have come a long way on process simplicity, too. Yes, we have more to do but insurers, distributors and advisers now have better, more streamlined processes to serve their protection clients – from sourcing the right product at the right premium to accessing GP helplines from the growing set of value-added benefits, now included as standard within most policies.

This, in itself, should be celebrated – providers have made the important step to offer more holistic, ‘always-on’ policies capable of delivering value even when their core purpose (to cover a claim) isn’t required.

Let’s not lose sight of these facts and continue to share them, both together and in public. A connected market is a better market. A positive discourse is better than a negative discourse. Let’s celebrate the things we do well, in private and in public.

As we begin to predict what the study will focus on and what the outcomes for the market will be, I remain hopeful. Ours is a market which performs an important role in society, a role we should ensure we and those who engage with it always appreciate.

Like most markets, there are things we could do better. Many of these things would help us, not necessarily to do more for our customers but to do the same for more customers. This is the growth we need. This is the growth a financially resilient society needs.

Let’s celebrate protection.

Paul Yates is product strategy director at iPipeline