A NEW Argos store will open inside Sainsbury’s Newton Abbot superstore by the end of next month.

The move for the retailers from the town centre store that closed last March was confirmed by Sainsbury’s this week.

A spokesperson said: ‘By bringing together the much-loved brands of Sainsbury’s and Argos under the one roof, Newton Abbot customers will be able to enjoy greater convenience as the new Argos will enable them to purchase thousands of technology, home and toy products whilst picking up their groceries.

‘The Argos store will feature an Argos Pay@Browse area – when permitted, customers will be able to use the tablets to purchase what they want quickly and conveniently, as well as browse for products with Argos colleagues on hand to help.’

Sally Henley, Newton Abbot’s town Centre development manager, said: ‘We had hoped that we would keep our town centre branch of Argos and so when we found out a few months ago that it would be closed and relocated into the Sainsbury’s store, it was disappointing.

‘However, from a business point of view it does makes sense to combine both offers under one, more than adequate roof, thus reducing costs and maximising profitability.

‘I know that every effort has been made to minimise job losses and it’s good too, that we do still have a Newton Abbot branch of Argos at the end of the day!

‘A planning application was submitted and approved a couple of years ago, to knock down the current Argos building in Queen Street and to replace it with a much better building.

‘This was going to incorporate commercial space on the ground floor and residential apartments above and so I would be interested to see if these plans will now come to fruition.

The departure of Argos will leave a gap in Queen Street and of course we also have the former Burger King unit, which is empty as well.

‘However, I know there is interest in both sites, as Queen Street is a busy commercial street.

‘Several new businesses have opened there in the last year, with two new businesses fitting out properties in Queen Street at the moment. The number of commercial town centre properties which are available to let in Newton Abbot continues to be very low, with a recent vacancy count coming it at under seven per cent, compared with a regional average of over 12 per cent. This is very heartening news and demonstrates clearly that Newton Abbot is still very much considered to be a desirable town in which to do business.”