Iceland plans to bid for the acquisition of stores from Sainsbury and Asda. Credit: Adcro.

British supermarket chain Iceland is reportedly planning to purchase certain Sainsburys and Asda stores ahead of their proposed merger.

The Sainsburys and Asda merger deal is currently under review with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

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The planned transaction is likely to result in the sell-off of stores in order to receive regulatory approval.

Iceland managing director Richard Walker was quoted by Financial Times as saying: “Although the companies’ traditional superstores would be too big for Iceland to take on, you can redevelop, you can carve up, you can put in neighbouring retailers alongside.”

“In a few months’ time we’ll open our 100th store, we want to open as many as we can.”

“We are looking at everything for sure. Food retail drives footfall and we are the only supermarket that is opening on retail parks. We are looking at every retailer, trying to pick off as much as we can.”

Iceland has plans to expand its Food Warehouse store concept, which was introduced in 2014 as a larger format.

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Walker was further quoted as saying: “They tend to be around twice the floor area of an Iceland store and have slightly lower gross margins but are more efficient to run because they’re all square boxes.

“In a few months’ time we’ll open our 100th store, we want to open as many as we can.

“The German discounters have been so formidable because they have the same unit, same shape and size, there are great efficiencies. It’s all about productivity. We definitely took some learnings from them.”

The CMA is expected to release the results of its in-depth investigation into the proposed merger as soon as this week.