Halfords set to open first Irish store next year

UK giant Halfords is planning to open its first Irish store next autumn. The company has applied to South Dublin County Council for permission to build a 1,053 sq m store at Belgard, Tallaght, in west Dublin.

Halfords sells bikes, car parts and motoring accessories. The company is well known in the UK where it has 400 stores and employs 9,000 people. A spokesman last night said the company had been looking at the Irish market for some time.

"We would expect to open our first store in the third quarter of 2004," he said. However, he added that the Dublin facility would be a "trial shop".

The spokesman said Halfords would assess its performance before making further decisions. "We tend to do things on a phased basis," he explained. "No retailer is simply going to enter a market and open 20 outlets straight away."

He was unable to say how much Halfords would be likely to invest in the Republic, or to reveal the likely cost of developing the Belgard outlet. Nor was he able to predict how many people the store would employ. The company averages around 22 workers per store. However, its stores vary in size from warehouse to high-street scale outlets.

The firm is seeking permission from South Dublin County Council to add a mezzanine floor to an existing 348.2 sq m unit in Belgard Retail Park. The application states that this will bring total floor space to 1,053.4 sq m.

The store will be located alongside a number of other warehouse-style outlets, including a Woodies DIY unit owned by the Grafton group.

Halfords has its headquarters in Redditch in Worcestershire. Its largest shareholder is French-based CVC European Equity. Citicorp, the company's directors and its pension fund also have small stakes in the business.

The company was owned by the Boots chemist parent, the Boots Company plc, which sold the chain to its current owner in August 2002 for £358 sterling (€509 million), when that group decided to concentrate on its pharmacy and healthcare businesses.

The most recent available figures show that Halfords made a pre-tax profit of £48.7 million in the year to March 29th, 2002, a 30 per cent improvement on the previous year's earnings of £37.7 million. Turnover grew by £20 million to £528.6 million.

The accounts include a charge of £2.2 million for the disposal of its loss-making garage business to the Automobile Association (AA) during the year.

Retained profits for the year were £32 million. The company did not pay a dividend. The company's balance sheet shows that its total assets stood at £204 million.

Halfords began life as a hardware store in the 1890s. It became largely associated with bicycle sales, but now stocks around 12,000 different products. It claims to be the largest operator in its market in the UK.

The company is the latest in a line of high-profile UK retailers that have entered the Irish market over the past decade.

Its arrival could also spark debate on the cap on warehouse retail space which is claimed to be preventing furniture retailer Ikea from entering the Irish market.