Argos has announced the closure of its long-standing branch in Chatham High Street. The store's closing date is Wednesday, 26 January. It coincides with the completion of the new Argos warehouse and distribution centre at the £24 million M2CityLink industrial park on the Medway City Estate. Sainsbury's, which bought Argos in 2016, is axing 420 standalone Argos stores by March 2024 as part of a restructuring plan to reduce its costs by £105 million. This will leave only about 100 standalone Argos branches across the country, with more stores opening within existing Sainsbury's supermarkets instead. An Argos spokesperson said: “Our Chatham Argos store will close next week and colleagues were offered opportunities to redeploy to alternative roles within Sainsbury’s. "Customers can continue to shop with us at our nearby stores, including via a new Argos Click and Collect point at the nearby Sainsbury’s Chatham supermarket and at our Argos Strood store." Argos declined to reveal the number of redundancies that will be made, but it is understood that some staff have been redeployed to the new Medway City Estate distribution centre. Argos occupies a building that was built in the 1960s as an Edward Bates department store and a Sainsbury's supermarket.
In February 1976, Sainsbury's relocated to its new larger store inside the Pentagon Centre, closing the nearby branch in the High Street. In 1979, Edward Bates was sold to the Bentalls department store group, which took over the entire building. Bentalls occupied the building until 1984, before Argos later moved in. Plans for the future of the site are unknown at this time. Comments are closed.
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