Asda will axe jobs in the UK as supermarket struggles continue
Asda will axe jobs in the UK amid increasing pressure on British supermarkets.
The redundancies will be at Walmart-owned supermarket's Leeds head office.
The supermarket said in a statement:
"It’s well documented that in recent years, customers have radically changed the way they shop.
"We were the first of the “big four” to recognise this and launch a new strategy in 2013 yet the external pressures have accelerated at an increasingly rapid rate over the last 18 months.
“As a result, the industry faces major challenges and the certainty of permanent structural change. In the context of this, we also have to further change the way we do business. Today, we have started to talk to our colleagues in head office functions about what this means for them. We have made some difficult but necessary decisions but we must discuss these with our colleagues before we talk publicly.”
Asda admitted that 2016 would be a "challenging" year for the supermarket sector just last week, as it unveiled £500m of investment in further price cuts to attract shoppers.
It's Christmas sales fell the furthest of any supermarket over the festive period, down 3.5 per cent according to the latest Kantar World Panel data.
Rival supermarket's Tesco and Sainsbury's reported a better than expected boost to sales over the all-important Christmas period.