Asda announces sale of photo division following worst quarterly performance ever

Less than a week after reporting its worst quarterly sales performance ever, Asda is set to sell its Photo Division to Photo-Me, the instant-service equipment group.

The acquisition, which is currently expected to take place on 31 October 2016, is estimated to be for £5.35m - £3.35m for the Photo Division and central consignment stock for an estimated £2m.

The Photo Division consists of 191 photo centres, as well as 172 self-service kiosk sites located in Asda stores. These businesses will be managed by Photo-Me under a ten-year concession.

As part of the acquisition, the employees of the Photo Division will transfer across to the Group.

Besides those in-store locations, Photo-Me will also operate the Asda-branded online photo-processing offering for a minimum of 2.5 years.

Serge Crasnianski, Chief Executive of Photo-Me, said: “This is an interesting opportunity to significantly expand our UK business in a strong set of locations and increase our market share in the digital photo printing market, which we believe has growth potential in the digital age.

“Photo-Me is the leader in its field with a wide range of attractive and innovative products which we plan to introduce into the Asda stores as soon as possible, and we believe will improve the level of trading and overall performance over the next two years and beyond.”

This announcement comes after the Leeds-headquartered supermarket chain has revealed that sales fell 7.5% in the three months to June 30th, making this the eighth consecutive quarter in a row that it has seen a drop in sales.