NEWS
17 OCTOBER 2025 ASIAN TRADER 5
When Amazon opened its first
UK grocery store 2021, it chose
a site in London for a cash
ier-free store that heralded a
major assault on Britain’s
$290 billion food market.
It closed in 2023 and this
week the group said it planned
to shut its remaining 19
Amazon Fresh stores – a
failure that highlights the
brutal economics of UK food
retail, and how one of the
most powerful retailers in the
world may still be feeling its
way on how to compete
globally in groceries.
Last year, it also dropped
Amazon Fresh delivery in five
cities but still serves over 100
UK towns and cities, including
London, Birmingham and
Manchester. It also ended its
own grocery delivery service
in Germany.
Amazon’s announcement
does not impact its more than
60 Amazon Fresh stores and
more than a dozen Amazon Go
stores in the United States or
its over 539 Whole Foods
Market locations across the
US and Canada, the company
said.
Amazon UK shutters all “Just
Walk Out” concept stores
Turn on the lights
he evenings are growing darker, earlier, and winter is
coming. At Asian Trader we are turning on the lights and
turning up the heat to make everything welcoming and
warm for our Diwali issue – a tradition now of many years’
standing, when we try to give our readers a bumper issue with
greetings and best wishes from well-loved names in the sector.
Diwali offers everybody the chance to relax and enjoy
hearth, home and family, and to forget about the cares of the
outside world for just a short while. And we hope that this
bumper issue will go a little way towards helping and adding to
the festive atmosphere.
Among the traditional crop of big interviews for this issue
we have some real scoops – Juul MD Melissa Wisdom to tell us
about the big launch of the new Juul2 range; The guys at
Parfetts with all their latest news and plans for 2026; Stuart
Graham, who bravely stepped into Matt Collins’s shoes at KP
and is killing it; Dawood Pervez of Bestway on 50 years of
wholesaling; and Joanne Thomas, the new General Secretary
of the shopworker’s union, Usdaw, to talk about workers’
rights, among other subjects.
We’ve also a whole load of great features, from Halloween and
Diwali, to PMPs and RTDs, to satisfy your appetites for market
info and news about what’s best to stock on your shelves.
So please, enjoy, but also remember that rust never sleeps,
as they say – by which we mean the powers-that-be in West
minster and Holyrood continue to pass legislation that
threatens the livelihoods of hard-working retailers and
manufacturers.
The recent ban on BOGOFs and other promotions, as part of
the rolling, never-ending HFSS regime, while mostly affecting
the mults still heralds the beady eye of government scanning
all sectors, convenience included. Rebecca Tobi of The Food
Foundation rang the bell when she commented, “Looking
ahead, price discounts and promotions remain a glaring
loophole in the current HFSS restrictions” and made the “Will
nobody think of the children?” argument, universally
deployed by lobbyists.
Meanwhile, north of the border, MSPs are already talking
about drafting laws to force plain packaging on vapes, limiting
the health benefits of quitting tobacco by stopping potential
vapers from seeing what’s on offer. And this despite new
evidence of a damaging political cost to Scottish Labour if it
enforces the generational ban on tobacco sales.
Over in the USA the Federal government has just shut down
(again) as wrangles over funding reassume their now nearly
annual crisis. But perhaps a shut-down of government in the
UK might not be a bad experiment to try – it would get the
legislators off the backs of the “hard-working people” they are
always talking about.
After all, Belgium had no government for nearly two years
between 2018 and 2020 (breaking the record from 2010-11)
and it didn’t damage the country. Maybe we really should give
it go here for a bit.
And in the meantime, for the duration of Diwali, we can at
least pretend.
Royal Mail’s owner
has bought a mul
ti-million-pound
stake in another firm,
which will see
thousands of
convenience stores
rebranded.
International
Distribution Services
(IDS), the firm which owns the
postal service, has concluded a
purchase of 49% of shares in parcel
company Collect+, with part of
the deal meaning about 8,000
stores will now be branded Royal
Mail.
It means high street stores will
sell postage over the counter and
customers can pay bills in person
rather than only online.
The deal, worth £43.9m, will
also see self-service kiosks
installed in some shops next year,
extended opening hours including
weekends and evenings – plus
retaining the normal operations of
Collect+, which include sending
and returning parcels from other
carriers.
Collect+, which has a network
of more than 14,000 locations
made up of newsagents, conveni
ence stores, supermarkets and
petrol stations, was bought out by
PayPoint in 2020.
PayPoint said IDS’s investment
values the business at £90m and
sets it up for future growth.
IDS’s investment in the parcel
network follows its decision to
pull back on letter deliveries.
Alistair Cochrane, Royal Mail’s
chief executive, said: “The launch
of the Royal Mail Shop brand
creates a new and improved high
street destination for all of our
customers’ parcel needs in one
location.
“This investment is one of the
ways we’re making Royal Mail
more convenient.”
Royal Mail is expected to
ditch second-class letter
deliveries on Saturdays and
change the service to every
other weekday, across the UK,
starting from July next year.
Collect+ deal allows for paying bills in-person,
OTC postage
Royal Mail to rebrand thousands
of convenience stores