Asda has confirmed the completion of a new 103,000 sq ft training facility adjacent to its Leeds headquarters.
The building - which has been constructed on the site of a former Tetley bottling plant - includes a dummy store in which Asda can trial new concepts, as well as six training rooms, a 700-seat auditorium for presentations, a new boardroom and a visual reality suite, which will showcase new store concepts through 3D image mapping technology.
“This state-of-the-art facility will allow us to test out new creative concepts for our stores, host customer listening groups and provide meeting spaces as an overspill to the main Asda House site. It’s a significant improvement over the old site in Morley that it’s replacing, that’s for sure,” an Asda spokesman told The Grocer.
Builders ISG completed the complex in just eight weeks, installing 10,000 shelves and 9,000 sq ft refrigeration cabinets within the site’s dummy store area, as well as a 8,000 sq ft mezzanine structure.
“The building will host our purpose-built Skills Academy and we’re pleased to be able to offer the local community the opportunity to use the space too as an extension of our Community Life scheme already running in Asda stores,” added the spokesman.
Like rival Tesco, Asda is currently looking at ways of better utilising space in its larger stores in the future.
In May The Grocer revealed Asda was working with the RSA to come up with a new model for retail in which space is made available to local authorities, business and voluntary groups in a bid to put the retailer at the heart of local communities.
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