Shuttered: Palmers closes big box Westgate store due to impacts of Covid-19

Palmers Westgate opened before Christmas in 2014. Photo / Cemac Commercial Interiors

Garden centre retail chain Palmers has closed its big box Westgate store as the retailer succumbs to the impacts of Covid-19.

The West Auckland store, which opened just before Christmas in 2014, was one of the chain's newer and larger stores.

A spokeswoman for the company told the Herald the retailer had planned to shut the store and relocate to a smaller location adjacent to the site before the mandatory lockdown, but the forced closure of stores and lost revenue had made that unfeasible.

The decision to close Palmers Westgate was "made in isolation" and no further store closures were planned, the spokeswoman said.

"Closing Palmers Westgate was a difficult decision for us, however the current position with Covid-19 made the long term position of the store untenable.

"While we had plans to move to a smaller and more cost-effective site adjacent to the existing store, we could not open to customers during lockdown and were unable to reduce overheads.

"Without the support of a franchisee, we could not support investing additional capital to fund the ongoing shortfalls. This decision was made before the country moved to lockdown level two and trading recommenced, however the long term impacts of the last three months and resulting economic uncertainty did not change the position."

The spokeswoman said Palmers had worked to redeploy staff from the store to other locations and "other retail connections".

"We are happy to report that a number of the staff members have already found employment."

Palmers Westgate was about 4000sq m in size.

Palmers operates 12 stores, 10 of these are franchised and two are company-owned. The company is New Zealand-owned and was founded more than 100 years ago.

The retail sector has faced a string on store closures in recent weeks due to the impacts of Covid-19.

Max Fashions is the latest retail chain to announce it would downsize its store network, proposing to close 17 stores - almost half of its locations - after a zero balance sheet during seven weeks of lockdown.

The announcement follows that of The Warehouse Group's on Monday - the company said it planned to close another six stores, taking its total store closures to nine, laying off more than 1000 staff, including 130 in its head office.

Fellow NZX-listed retailer Michael Hill last month announced it would close nine stores worldwide, including three in New Zealand. It signalled that more closures were likely.

Smiths City, Bunnings, Ingrid Starnes and South Island retailer H&J Smith have also announced they will close stores in their portfolios.