Here are the stories making the business headlines across the country this morning.
Work on £50million Aberdeen beach playpark begins next week
Work to create a futuristic playpark with a seven-storey-tall “rope factory”, an events field and an amphitheatre at Aberdeen beach will begin next week.
And the Beach Leisure Centre will soon be stripped of its assets as plans to reduce the structure to rubble press forward.
It’s part of the local authority’s multi-million-pound scheme to make the city’s waterfront a world-class destination for residents and visitors.
Council leaders say this will be the” biggest beach redevelopment in 35 years”.
Read the full story in the Press&Journal.
Aldi plots expansion as profits surge
Aldi is set to step up its expansion in Britain after the German discounter’s profits more than trebled in the last financial year.
Its British business reported a 250 per cent increase in pre-tax profit, reaching £536.7million for the 12 months to the end of December 2023, from £152.6million in 2022.
Sales at Aldi UK increased by £2.4billion to £17.9billion, with margins widening from 1.2% in 2022 to 3.1%.Sales of premium own-label products rose by nearly 16% year-on-year, according to the latest monthly data from Kantar, the retail researcher.
That compares with a drop of 10 per cent for “value” own-label items, suggesting that cost of living pressures are easing.
Mountain Warehouse to open 50 more stores
Mountain Warehouse has pledged to open another 50 stores next year while brushing off fears about the death of the British high street.
The outdoor clothing chain has committed to an aggressive expansion of physical stores, both in Britain and overseas, amid a boom in demand for in-person shopping.
It will open about 50 stores globally this year, taking its total to about 370 in nine countries.
“We think there is lots of life left in lots of our high streets,” Mark Neale, 56, the company’s founder and chief executive, said: “All that death of the high street stuff has been a bit overdone. We’re definitely very positive about physical retail at the moment.”
Read the full story in The Times.
Asos shoppers hit out at new £3.95 returns charge
Asos customers have reacted with anger over a new rule charging them for returns if they do not keep a certain amount of their order.
Some customers received an email over the weekend saying they had been identified as having a "frequently high return rate". Such customers will now have £3.95 deducted from their refund if they keep less than £40 worth of items.
Asos has not said what constitutes a high return rate, but claimed "nothing's changed" for the majority of its customers.
"We’re making this change so that we can continue offering free returns to all our customers," the company told the BBC.
Oasis and Ticketmaster urged to refund fans after ‘dynamic pricing’ debacle
Oasis and Ticketmaster should refund fans who ended up paying hundreds of pounds more than the face value of tickets after so-called “dynamic pricing” was used to inflate prices, the consumer group Which? has said.
Which? called on the band and the ticketing company to “do the right thing” and refund the difference between the face value of the tickets and the heavily inflated price many ended up having to pay.
Some fans paid more than £350 for tickets with a face value of less than £150, and had to make a split-second decision whether to complete their purchase, as dynamic pricing caused prices to soar during the booking process.
Lisa Webb, a consumer law expert at Which?, said: “It seems extremely unfair that Oasis fans got up early and battled through queues only to find that ticket prices had more than doubled from the originally advertised price."
Read the full story in The Guardian