Primark plans further US store expansion in 2017

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 9, 2016

Anglo-Irish value fashion retailer Primark is to expand further in the US with plans to open two Massachusetts locations and one in New York, as well as enlarging its Boston store.

The company currently has five US stores, mainly in malls, and will open in Burlington and Braintree, Massachusetts, as well as the Staten Island borough in New York. It will also grow its Boston footprint by 31% taking the store there to 92,400 sq ft.

Primark has been relatively slow to expand overseas compared to peers such as Inditex and H&M that have massive international store portfolios. It is currently in just nine countries in addition to its home markets of the UK and Ireland.

The new US locations will be part of a fiscal 2017 expansion plan than will see it adding an extra 1.3m sq ft of space. It added 1.2m sq ft in fiscal 2016.

New stores are key to the firm which on Tuesday reported a full-year comparable stores sales dip of 2% but a total sales rise of 9% currency-neutral due to those new locations.