Wednesday 11 Dec 2013
Station retail continues to outshine high street, Network Rail sales stats show
- Region & Route:
- National
Retail sales at Britain’s biggest and busiest railway stations continue to significantly outperform the high street, latest figures from Network Rail show.
Station retail sales results from July to September 2013 show a 4.74% growth in like-for-like sales compared to the same period the previous year. High street sales, reported by the British Retail Consortium, grew by 1.5% over the same period.
The figures were compiled from the results of retailers operating from over 580,000 sq ft of retail space (520 units/shops) at 16 of Britain’s biggest and busiest stations owned and operated by Network Rail, benefiting from a combined annual footfall of over a billion.
Top performing stations include Kings Cross (+28.4%), followed by Edinburgh Waverley (+13.1%) and Manchester Piccadilly (+13.1%) compared to the same period last year.
Specialist foods continued to perform strongly, with sales growing by 18.5%, supermarkets up by 9.75% and pubs and bars by 6.9%. Overall, this is the second biggest growth in station retail results recorded over the past three years.
Network Rail’s retail commercial director, Hamish Kiernan, said: “These latest figures show that stations have become great trading environments for retailers, thanks to the growing numbers of people who choose to travel by rail and Network Rail’s programme of investment to create destination stations.
“The huge growth in sales at King’s Cross, where the new western concourse has given people a much wider choice of food, drink and retail brands, shows that investment in bigger, better stations can benefit passengers, businesses and the wider public. We will continue to work with retailers to help them grow their business as we look to take advantage of further exciting developments at our stations in 2014.”
All profits from Network Rail’s retail activity is re-invested in the railway, limiting the cost to tax payers and passengers.
Notes to editors
Network Rail is one of the largest land and property owners in the country and will generate over £1bn in the next five years from commercial activities for re-investment in our rail estate. This would be enough to transform Birmingham New Street or King’s Cross stations, or put in place 5,000km of new railway.
The company already has over 580,000 sq ft retail space at 16 of the largest stations across the country – that’s more retail space than Bluewater – showcasing many leading high-street brands.
Network Rail is also the country's largest provider of commercial property to small and medium sized businesses with over 7000 properties nationwide.
In addition, the company works in partnership on existing development projects, including multi-million pound commercial schemes above our stations at London Bridge (Shard) and Cannon Street and our first multi-site joint venture: Solum Regeneration.
Network Rail owns and manages 16 of Britain’s biggest and busiest stations:
National stations
- Birmingham New Street
- Edinburgh Waverley
- Glasgow Central
- Leeds
- Liverpool Lime Street
- Manchester Piccadilly
London stations
- Cannon Street
- Charing Cross
- Euston
- Fenchurch Street
- King’s Cross
- Liverpool Street
- London Bridge
- Paddington
- Victoria
- Waterloo
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About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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