New Aldi supermarket opens in St Leonards

The store, located at Bulverhythe Retail Park, in Bexhill Road, opened to customers at 8am on Thursday (September 17).

Coffeehouse chain Costa Coffee opened next to the German-based discount supermarket chain in August.

Store manager Matthew Williams said: “It’s been a wonderful morning here at the opening of Aldi, St Leonards. It was lovely to welcome our new customers into store and I look forward to meeting more of the community in the coming weeks.

“I’d also like to thank our customers for following the social distancing guidelines we have in place to ensure the health and safety of both our customers and colleagues.”

Despite opening a new store today, Aldi said, in June, that it is looking for 20 new store locations in Sussex, as part of an expansion drive which would see 1,200 extra stores open by 2025.

Aldi already has stores in Rye Road, Hastings, and London Road, Bexhill.

However, a spokesman said the proposed stores in Hastings and Bexhill are ‘in addition to any existing stores, or any stores that are currently being built’.

Aldi is also looking to open stores in Bognor, Brighton, Burgess Hill, Chichester, Crawley, East Grinstead, Eastbourne, Goring, Hailsham, Haywards Heath, Horsham, Littlehampton, Midhurst, Newhaven, Portslade, Shoreham, Uckfield and Worthing.

The supermarket chain previously listed ‘requirement towns’ on its website, which included Hastings and Bexhill, but this is the first time it has announced its proposals to open more stores.

Aldi, which currently has more than 880 stores across the UK, says it has identified 20 new locations where it is looking for freehold town centre of edge-of-centre sites suitable for development.

It says each site should be around 1.5 acres and able to accommodate a 20,000 sq foot store with around 100 parking spaces, ideally on a prominent main road and with good visibility and access.