Aldi has revealed its wish list for where it wants to open 16 new stores - as the firm becomes Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket.
The discount supermarket has more than 970 stores in the UK, and now wants to open 16 more by the end of the year.
Aldi also said it will soon be hiring 6,000 more jobs.
The areas where Aldi is still looking to bring new stores include cities like Bath and Birmingham, as well as smaller towns such as Penzance and Maidenhead.
Aldi is looking for specific locations for its new stores.
It wants freehold town-centre or edge-of-centre sites that are suitable for property development.
Each site will house a 20,000 square foot store with around 100 parking spaces, ideally near a main road with good visibility and access.
Some of the areas Aldi is targeting across the country include:
- South East – Caversham, Farnham, Maidenhead and Worthing
- South West – Bath, Teignmouth and Penzance
- West Midlands – Birmingham, Coventry and Warwick
- East Midlands – Chesterfield, Leicester and Derby
- East of England – Cheshunt, Brentwood and Rayleigh
- North West – Warrington, West Didsbury and Formby
- North East – Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland
- Yorkshire – Harrogate, Otley and York
- Scotland – Cathcart, Bonnyrigg and Ladysmill
- Wales – Barry and Chepstow
Aldi UK and Ireland chief executive Giles Hurley said : “The cost-of-living crisis is worsening, and it’s being felt by millions of households across the UK.
"It’s in times like these when our customers rely on us the most, which is why we’re focusing on continuing to deliver our longstanding price promise by offering the lowest possible prices in Britain, every single day."
In its annual trading update, Aldi said it had attracted record numbers of new shoppers in the past six months as pandemic restrictions were lifted.
The latest data from analysts at Kantar shows Aldi attracted 1.5million extra customers to its stores over the past 12 weeks and sales grew at 18.7%, overtaking Morrisons with a market share of 9.3%.
Aldi is also opening a new eco-friendly store in a bid to reduce carbon emissions by up to two-thirds and make recycling easier for customers.
The store - which opened this week in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire - was built with sustainable materials, such as timber fibre insulation, cement replacement concrete and recycled lighting columns.
The building has solar panels and uses chiller doors to reduce energy consumption, the German discounter giant said.
Its structure was redesigned to help reduce overall energy demand by 57% compared with a normal store.
Features in the store include a "hard to recycle" unit to allow customers to recycle items not collected by local authorities, such as coffee pods, medicine packets, batteries, soft plastics and cosmetic packaging.
