LLANELLI: Aldi wants you to lobby for a new store, 16 months after it shut the one in town

Aldi would like people in Llanelli to write to the council asking it to approve a new supermarket.

The company has published figures from its own consultation, saying 519 of 629 respondents backed its Sandy Road plan in principle, and is pointing residents at a form on its own campaign site to send their views to Carmarthenshire Council.

Its argument is that the western side of town is underserved, and that a store there would save residents travelling further afield.

Sixteen months ago it closed the one in the town centre.

The Swanfield Place store shut on 27 April 2025, with the company saying the site no longer met its requirements. Plans to turn it into a PureGym went in before it had even closed.

Lleidi ward councillor Sarah Evans called the closure a blow to those without a car, saying it would hit the elderly and most vulnerable hardest. Her fellow ward councillor Shaun Greaney said the shop had been a lifeline for people barely scraping by.

The Trostre store that remains is around a 30-minute walk from the town centre.

Aldi now says a Sandy Road store would serve communities to the west including Pwll and Burry Port.

Burry Port may not be waiting. Carmarthenshire Council is inviting developers to bid for the 3.7-acre field between the town’s station and the harbour, where Tesco won permission in 2012 and never built, with bids closing at noon on 30 September. Its own planning appraisal says a retail scheme, possibly a foodstore, is acceptable in principle.

Lidl has had Burry Port on its wanted list for some time. The discounter’s published site requirements name the town, along with north Llanelli and three Swansea sites at Morfa, Killay or Sketty and Mumbles. It listed all of them when we reported the brochure in April last year too.

Whoever ends up building anything in Burry Port still faces the full planning process, so a store there remains years away.

The survey figures Aldi has published say 522 respondents thought a new store would benefit the area, 506 rated the design great or okay, and 425 said they loved the proposals and hoped the council would approve them.

The consultation was Aldi’s own, run on its own website, and the release does not say when it ran. The plans went out to public consultation in the spring, three months before the application was lodged.

Rob Jones, Aldi’s real estate director, said the response from the community had been encouraging.

What comes down to make room is Pinopolis, the bowling, darts and soft play centre that opened in April 2023. Its David Edwards said in May that the site was no longer economically or operationally viable. The building went up in 1979 as Day’s Ford, which closed in 2020.

Aldi says the store would employ up to 40 people, with store assistants starting at £13.50 an hour, and puts the number of jobs currently at the site at three.

None of it is decided. The application went in during August and the council has not set a date to determine it.

The objections so far have been about traffic. Cllrs Martyn Palfreman and Edward Skinner said in May that any permission should be conditional on further improvements to Sandy Road, and council highway officers objected to vehicles turning in off Sandy Road at all, so the entrance has been moved to the roundabout to the east. A drive-thru in the earlier layout was dropped.

The site is tight. Its western end sits in flood zone 3, the highest flood risk category, and the store is squeezed between a water main easement and a sewer, with Aldi’s design statement saying the layout cannot be amended without affecting the viability of the scheme. The plans show 133 parking spaces and eight electric charging bays, with cabling for another 26.

Aldi also points to its own research on what it calls the postcode penalty, which it says shows households without an Aldi nearby pay £836 more a year on groceries, rising to £2,437 where the highest-priced supermarkets dominate.