No announcement yet on future of Tesco jobs in North Wales

It is estimated up to 9,000 Tesco jobs throughout the UK could be affected, however it is expected up to half of these could be redeployed to other customer facing roles.

A spokesman said: “We are still speaking with our colleagues who are affected so we cannot give a breakdown of which stores across the country are involved.”

Tesco has superstores in Abergele, Bangor, Caernarfon, Llandudno Junction, Porthmadog, Prestatyn and Ruthin and a Tesco Extra store in Bethesda.

There was speculation the company’s in store bakeries, meat, fish and delicatessen counters would be affected. But the spokesman added: “Contrary to reports over the weekend, we do not plan to make any significant changes to bakeries this year.

“Customers are shopping in different ways and have less time available to shop, which means they are using our counters less frequently. We will be making changes to the counters in our large stores to ensure we have the right offer for customers. We expect around 90 stores will close their counters, with the remaining 700 trading with either a full or flexible counter offer for our customers.

“We are also changing the way we manage stock. We have found a simpler way to conduct our store routines and will be rolling this out to all our stores. This change mean a significantly reduced workload, with fewer hours needed to complete the routines.”

There were also reports staff canteens would be affected by the cuts. The spokesman added: “Currently only one third of our stores provide a hot food service and, over recent years, there has been reduced demand for this. We have been rolling out new self-service colleague kitchens in a number of stores, and we are now extending this to all remaining stores with a hot food service.

“This change will impact the people working in our colleague rooms, who are employed by third party caterers, and we are working with them to provide as much support as we can.”