More than half a billion dollars of discount hardware will be offloaded in a massive fire sale after Woolworths set a closing date for its failed home improvement chain Masters.
The supermarket giant drew a line under its disastrous experiment with hardware on Wednesday, announcing the sale of its Home Timber and Hardware chain to Mitre 10's owner, Metcash, and the sale of its Masters Home Improvement stores.
Masters stores, including Mandurah’s, will close their doors for good on or before December 11, Woolworths said.
It first flagged its exit from the business in January.
Everything from paint, timber, barbecues, vacuum cleaners and all other Masters stock, worth between $600 million and $700 million, will be sold off in a fire sale which is expected to start this week, a Woolworths spokesman said.
Woolworths said it would honour customer gift cards, warranties, returns and laybys, and would complete any contracted installation projects.
“Since the sale process began, our 7700 staff in the Home Improvement businesses have worked extremely hard in an uncertain environment and we sincerely thank them for their commitment,” Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci said.
“We will work hard to find Masters employees jobs within the group or pay full redundancy where suitable roles are not available.”
Bunnings confirmed it planned to take over 15 Masters sites.
Eleven of those would replace existing stores.
