Wal-Mart Canada to spend over $750 million this year on new, remodelled stores

[number8888]

OTTAWA — Walmart Canada said Tuesday it will spend more than $750 million on projects across the country over the next year, adding 4.6 million square feet of retail space and creating 14,000 jobs.

The Canadian division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retail company, said the jobs created will be a combination of in-store positions and those related to the construction and renovation projects.

Walmart said it has 73 different projects planned in its current fiscal year, which started Feb. 1, some of them being brand-new outlets, others being expansions, remodellings or relocations of existing stores.

It said 39 of these projects involve turning former Zellers outlets it bought the rights to last year into Walmart stores.

"This is an exciting year for Walmart Canada," Walmart Canada CEO Shelley Broader said in a statement. "We are proud of our 18-year record of growth, and of the investment we make in the Canadian economy."

Walmart said that, as of last month, it has 333 stores in Canada, employing more than 85,000 people and serving more than one million customers a day.

© The Financial Post


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Walmart+...#ixzz1lhzS9dmJ

Whether you love or hate Wal-mart, it's good that they are investing in the economy I guess.

I thought Target bought all the Zellers stores though. Interesting to see which Zellers got bought up by WM.

[NG]

Whether you love or hate Wal-mart, it's good that they are investing in the economy I guess.

I thought Target bought all the Zellers stores though. Interesting to see which Zellers got bought up by WM.

+1 I had read articles which mentioned "some" (with no exact numbers) stores were bought by WM but 39 is a lot. I wonder if Target realized WM would be taking that big of a chunk of them when they passed on buying all the leases.

[exiledinottawa]

I believe the Zellers at Gerrard Square will be turned into a Wal Mart of some sort

Yup here is the article

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news/local/article/1109870

[FunSave22]

I wonder if Target realized WM would be taking that big of a chunk of them when they passed on buying all the leases.

I expect they did. Especially seeing as Target resold some of the Zellers they bought, some of them to Walmart.

[NG]

I expect they did. Especially seeing as Target resold some of the Zellers they bought, some of them to Walmart.

Wow. Kinda brazen of them considering WM has been entrenched in Canada for years and they're likely going to go full tilt to compete with Target.

[FunSave22]

Wow. Kinda brazen of them considering WM has been entrenched in Canada for years and they're likely going to go full tilt to compete with Target.

I expect that Zellers demanded that Target buy a minimum number of stores and this was more than Target wanted. So they knew they would be selling some and Walmart would be a likely buyer for many of them.

The Zellers around me that was sold to Walmart by Target is a quite small one and not close to where the much larger Target is going to be. I expect Target has no need for the small store and don't consider it to be much competition to their larger store that is around a 12-15 minute drive away.


I've never seen a small Target store in the US, although I have seen small Walmarts. So Walmart may be looking to bring their small store design to Canada, if they already haven't.


I'm not in Ontario and all of the Zellers that I know of that were sold to Walmart are small ones. There certainly may be larger ones that Walmart also bought. Just for some reason Target didn't see a good reason to buy them, I expect.

[hsz]

I expect that Zellers demanded that Target buy a minimum number of stores and this was more than Target wanted. So they knew they would be selling some and Walmart would be a likely buyer for many of them.

The Zellers around me that was sold to Walmart by Target is a quite small one and not close to where the much larger Target is going to be. I expect Target has no need for the small store and don't consider it to be much competition to their larger store that is around a 12-15 minute drive away.


I've never seen a small Target store in the US, although I have seen small Walmarts. So Walmart may be looking to bring their small store design to Canada, if they already haven't.


I'm not in Ontario and all of the Zellers that I know of that were sold to Walmart are small ones. There certainly may be larger ones that Walmart also bought. Just for some reason Target didn't see a good reason to buy them, I expect.

Wal-Mart's are not looking to use the 'small store' design here (which many of their older locations already are). They're converting existing locations to "Super Centres" with the grocery/blah blah blah additions.

A goodly part of this 750M will be directed towards expansion of existing locations.

[Wingding]

It would be very interesting to see which 39 Zellers store sites they plan on taking over. Must be mostly in Central or Eastern Canada. Here in the West we're chock-a-block with Zellers stores operating in spaces that Walmart outgrew (mostly former Woolco locations.) Plus we have a lot of other Zellers stores that are already close to Walmarts that were recently constructed. So obviously they're not going to be converting any of those.

[zoro69]

walmart is opening smaller stores here
http://www.canadiangrocer.com/top-st...ercentre-11085

[FunSave22]

It would be very interesting to see which 39 Zellers store sites they plan on taking over. Must be mostly in Central or Eastern Canada. Here in the West we're chock-a-block with Zellers stores operating in spaces that Walmart outgrew (mostly former Woolco locations.) Plus we have a lot of other Zellers stores that are already close to Walmarts that were recently constructed. So obviously they're not going to be converting any of those.

There 3 in Nova Scotia. All 3 of them are small.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/busines...-new-stores-ns



According to the article, Walmart plans to open 73 new stores in Canada in the next 12 months, with a total of 4.6 million square feet. That's works about to an average of about 63,000 square feet per store. That's no where near Supercenter size.


I expect most of the 39 they got from Zellers are going to be small. And some of the others they open will be Supercenters. But not too many will be Supercenters or that would drive up the average square footage.

[jaysfan4life]

More minimum wage paying jobs ... how is this news?

[Awjvail]

The Zellers in my city that is converting to a Walmart is small... probably 65,000 sq feet.

[EP32k2]

More minimum wage paying jobs ... how is this news?

Like it or hate it....at the end of the day jobs are still being created.

[inferno_gn]

Hi there,

They should spend more on living wages then minimun wages. Wal-mart and all other retailers sucess are from the drones that work to serve customers and sales. Though, I do want to see some of the older stores get some improvements. Some stores are just plain nasty...

Ju Leon...

[time space]

Death blow to yet more Canadian small retailers.