The story
Founded by Malcolm Walker in 1970.1
Iceland Foods began business in 1970, when Malcolm Walker opened the first store in Leg Street, Oswestry, Shropshire, England, with his business partner Peter Hinchcliffe. Together, they invested £60 for one month's rent at the store. They were still employees of Woolworths at the time, and their employment was terminated once their employer discovered their other roles. Iceland Foods initially specialised in loose frozen food. In 1977, they opened a store in Manchester selling own-labelled packaged food, and by 1978 the company had 28 stores.
In 1983, the business grew by purchasing the 18 stores of Bristol-based St. Catherine's Freezer Centres, and in 1984 the business went public for the first time. The cash investment was used to purchase 12 stores of South East-based Orchard Frozen Foods (who had gone into administration), AJ & M Freezer Foods, Fulham Freezer Foods and Igloo. The business purchased larger rival Bejam in 1989 after a hostile takeover bid. In 1993, the firm took over the food halls of the Littlewoods department store and also acquired the French Au Gel chain. This last move proved unsuccessful and the stores were dropped within a year.
Around 2000, the company attempted ties with British Home Stores. In May 2000, Iceland Foods merged with Booker plc, and Booker's Stuart Rose took the role of CEO of the merged company. He left for the Arcadia Group in November 2000 and was replaced by Bill Grimsey in January 2001.
Soon after Grimsey's appointment, Malcolm Walker, Iceland Foods's founder and chairman, was forced to stand down, as it was revealed that he had sold £13.5 million of Iceland Foods shares just five weeks before the company released the first of several profits warnings.
Iceland Foods' holding company was renamed the Big Food Group in February 2002, and attempted a refocus on the convenience sector with a bid for Londis. Grimsey remained until the takeover and demerger of the Big Food Group by a consortium led by the Icelandic company Baugur Group in February 2005. Walker subsequently returned to his previous role at Iceland Foods. Iceland Foods's website has a page critical of Grimsey's period in control.
After Baugur went into administration in 2009, a 77% stake in the firm came into the ownership of the Icelandic banks Landsbanki and Glitnir. In 2012 the stake was purchased by a consortium including Malcolm Walker and Graham Kirkham.
After Walker's return to the company, Iceland Foods reduced the workforce at the Deeside head office by 500, with approximately 300 jobs moved as a result of relocation of a distribution warehouse to Warrington.
In January 2009, Iceland Foods announced that it would buy 51 stores in the UK from the failed Woolworths chain, three days after the final 200 Woolworths stores closed their doors. In April 2009, Iceland Foods announced plans to close its appliance showrooms by September 2009 to concentrate on food retailing. Iceland Foods's sales for the year ended 27 March 2009 were £2.08 billion, a 16% increase on the previous year, with net profits of £113.7 million. An additional Iceland Foods store opened in Dudley town centre on 2 December 2010 in part of the former Beatties department store, 21 years after their initial departure from the town.
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In 2013, two labs, one in Ireland and another in Germany, on behalf of the Irish state agency FSAI, identified 0.1% equine DNA in some Iceland Foods products. The Iceland chief executive, Malcolm Walker, was criticised by the FSAI for comments he made on a BBC Panorama programme in February 2013. He was asked why the products had passed British tests but failed the Irish ones. He replied, "Well, that's the Irish, isn't it?" He later apologised, stating he was deeply sorry if he caused offence.
In November 2013, the firm began selling appliances online again in partnership with DRL Limited. In May 2014, the firm reintroduced online shopping, which had been dropped in 2007.
In January 2018, Iceland Foods announced that it would end the use of plastic for all of its own-brand products by the end of 2023.
In 2019, Iceland Foods opened 45 new stores in the UK (including 31 larger stores under The Food Warehouse fascia) but had also closed eight, increasing the number of UK stores to 942. The company has a strategic alliance with The Range, where Iceland's food offer has been introduced to nine of the home and garden retailer's stores. In 2019 it also expanded its warehousing locations, adding five multi-temperature regional distribution centres at Livingston, Warrington, Deeside, Enfield and Swindon.
Dispute over the trademark "Iceland"
Iceland Foods Ltd has been accused by the government of Iceland of engaging in abusive behaviour by trademarking the name of the country, and of "harass[ing] Icelandic companies and even the Icelandic tourism board" by pursuing legal action against Icelandic companies which use the name of their country in their trading names. In November 2016, the Icelandic government filed a legal challenge at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to have the company's trademark invalidated "on the basis that the term 'Iceland' is exceptionally broad and ambiguous in definition, often rendering the country's firms unable to describe their products as Icelandic". The Iceland Magazine noted that:
Iceland Foods was founded in 1970, but only acquired the Europe-wide trademark registration of "Iceland" in 2005. According to the Sagas Iceland, the nation was established in 874. It is an insult to common sense to maintain that the supermarket chain has a stronger claim to the trademark than the country.
In April 2019, the EUIPO invalidated the Iceland trademark. The EU's general court struck down an appeal in 2025, and this was welcomed by Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, Iceland's minister for foreign affairs.
From Wikipedia’s article on Iceland (supermarket), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4