Marks & Spencer to invest £30m in Scottish stores

Marks & Spencer plans to invest £30 million in stores across Scotland over the next 18 months, with five new or expanded stores in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Largs and Linlithgow.

Aberdeen will see the biggest spend, with a £15 million relocation to a space double the size of its existing city centre store on St Nicholas Street to a modern flagship on Union Square in spring 2025.

The new Aberdeen store will have bigger clothing, beauty and home departments, and will be Marks & Spencer's fourth biggest store in Scotland.

Rachel Rankine, North East Regional Manager for Marks & Spencer, said: "The scale of our investment is a vote of confidence in the future of retail in Aberdeen city centre, with a flagship store on the same scale as city centre stores in Birmingham and Liverpool.

"Where we have already invested in new formats, our customers have responded to the destination shopping experience and Aberdeen shoppers can look forward to having a bigger, better, fresher food hall and the best in M&S clothing and home."

Alongside a new M&S foodhall coming to Linlithgow later this month, there’s more investment in the Northeast economy with the opening of a new full-line store at Dundee’s Gallagher Retail Park this summer.

The British retailer will also open in Largs for the first time, with a new foodhall due to open in early 2025.

The new store openings and expansions will help to support over 6,500 M&S jobs across Scotland.

Sacha Berendji, Operations Director at Marks & Spencer, said: "This is our biggest ever investment in Scotland - bringing new jobs across the country with bigger, better, fresh-market style foodhalls and new opportunities for Scottish shoppers to access our best-ever, most inspiringly presented clothing, home and beauty range."

At the start of last year, M&S set out a £500 million multi-year investment in its store rotation programme across the UK and outlined its ambition to go faster in the programme and target delivery in three years instead of five by FY25/26.

The new investment for Scotland is on top of £32 million already invested in eleven Scottish stores over the last four years.

The retailer is "aiming to rotate from a base of 247 stores across the UK to 180 higher quality, higher productivity full line stores" that sell its clothing, home and food ranges.