Morrisons tackles debt pile with £2.5bn petrol forecourts sale

Morrisons has closed a £2.5bn deal to sell its 347 petrol stations to Motor Fuel Group (MFG). 

Both Morrisons and MFG are owned by Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), the American private equity firm who bought the supermarket three years ago. 

Morrisons said the sale would help tackle its mounting £8bn pile of debt. 

As part of the transaction the firm took a minority stake of approximately 20 per cent in MFG. 

The business also recently acquired McColl’s newsagents out of administration with plans to transform the stores into Morrisons Daily sites.

Morrisons is amongst the cohort of supermarkets battling it out to the cheapest amid the cost of living crisis. 

The company, which has 500 sites across the UK, lost its spot as Britain’s fourth largest grocer to Aldi. 

In March, Morrison’s reported its strongest like-for-like sales in over three years, helped by competitive pricing strategies. 

The privately owned business said it rolled out Aldi and Lidl Price match schemes which helped drive like-for-like sales by 4.6 per cent. 

Rami Baitiéh, chief executive of Morrisons said: “In January I outlined our plan to reinvigorate, refresh and strengthen Morrisons as we started our next chapter. 

“Those plans are now in full swing with the whole business engaged in the three key pillars of work that will be the foundation of the future for Morrisons: commercial excellence, operations optimisation and new value creation. “

He added: “Across the business we have identified many areas where we can raise our game and make small improvements which collectively will result in a significantly enhanced shopping experience for our customers.”