British supermarket chain Asda is reportedly close to completing its £800 million IT upgrade project six months after its initial deadline.
According to a report by The Sunday Telegraph, the retailer has informed staff that it will separate its IT systems from former owner Walmart within weeks.
While Walmart had initially given Asda a deadline of February 2025 to complete what the supermarket previously described as Europe’s biggest systems implementation programme, the project has been plagued with setbacks and delays.
Problems included a botched update that resulted in thousands of employees being paid incorrectly, and an incident last August when thousands of customers ordering from its George clothing range were left out of pocket ahead of the new school year.
The digital transformation plans, dubbed ‘Project Future’, involve the separation of more than 2,500 systems from Walmart.
News of the imminent completion comes after the supermarket chain dismissed over 200 employees involved in the project in March.
The move marked the second round of redundancies in five months under new chairman Allan Leighton.
Earlier this year, Walmart granted Asda an extension to the completion deadline, allowing the supermarket to avoid a multimillion-pound penalty charge after missing the original target.
Asda was purchased by the Issa brothers and TDR Capital from former owner Walmart in 2021.
Asda has faced a number of challenges in recent years at the grocer looks to reposition itself as the UK’s second-largest supermarket with plans to open 300 new convenience stores by the end of 2026.
These ambitious plans have suffered a significant blow, with figures published last year revealing that the company had lost more than one per cent of its market share and six per cent of its sales.
In stark contrast, Sainsbury’s – which after 11 years in third position overtook Asda in 2015 (save for one month in 2019 when it slipped back into third place) – experienced its highest year-on-year increase in market share since July 1997.
