By Riad Beladi
There is a difference between simply running a supermarket chain and understanding where the supermarket needs to be five years from now. Looking at Aldi UK’s latest moves, Giles Hurley appears to be building the business around the second idea.
The Aldi UK and Ireland CEO is overseeing a strategy that brings together price, store expansion, logistics, supplier relationships and changing consumer behaviour rather than treating each as a separate issue.
Aldi has now announced a record £900 million investment for 2027, including 40 new stores and continued investment in its distribution network. The retailer currently has 1,092 UK stores and retains its longer-term ambition of reaching 1,500. Aldi says its expansion is focused particularly on communities where consumers have limited access to affordable grocery shopping.
What Giles Hurley sees that others may miss
The interesting part of the strategy is not simply the number of stores.
Aldi says its 2025 sales reached £19 billion, up 5%, while it has invested £340 million in price reductions across more than 1,000 products during 2026. At the same time, operating profit remained broadly flat at £432.9 million as the retailer continued investing in prices, infrastructure and colleagues.
That tells us something about the model. Aldi is willing to use part of its financial capacity to protect its price position while continuing to build the physical network.
And the expansion is being supported by infrastructure.
Earlier this year Aldi began operations at its new £500 million Bardon distribution centre, a highly automated 1.3-million-square-foot facility designed to serve nearly 350 stores and handle almost seven million pallets annually when fully operational.
This is where Hurley’s strategy becomes particularly interesting. You cannot keep adding stores efficiently without building the supply chain underneath them.
The consumer is changing — and Aldi is following the behaviour
Aldi’s strategy also reflects the way shoppers are using its stores. The company says customers are buying more products and shopping in more Aldi stores, while its growing network is making the retailer more convenient for regular and top-up shopping.
And now the retailer is testing another part of the shopping journey: rapid grocery delivery through Deliveroo, initially across eight stores from October, with a planned nationwide launch in early 2027. Around 2,000 Aldi products are expected to be available through the service.
This is important because Aldi is not abandoning its discount-store model to chase every retail trend. It is testing whether its value proposition can follow the customer into another shopping occasion.
Giles Hurley understands that expansion is not simply about opening stores
The most revealing part of Aldi’s current strategy may therefore be its combination of where it opens, what it charges, how it sources and how efficiently it moves products.
Aldi has also committed to having at least 50% of products sourced through long-term supplier agreements by 2027, while reporting £14 billion spent with British suppliers in 2025.
For ISN, this is the bigger story.
Giles Hurley is not simply expanding Aldi’s footprint. He is connecting store location, consumer affordability, supply security and distribution efficiency into one retail model.
The real test will be whether Aldi can continue scaling towards 1,500 stores without losing the simplicity and price discipline that created its position in the first place
