Tesco is refitting its Blessington Road store in Naas, Co Kildare, with new shelving, storage and refrigeration infrastructure. The work, thought to cost about €500,000, is being carried out without closing the store and is expected to finish on 10 December, in time for the Christmas trading period.

Tesco Ireland, which is part of the UK-listed Tesco plc and is based in Dun Laoghaire, reported turnover of €3.75 billion for the 53 weeks to 28 February 2026, with pre-tax profit up 8.6 per cent to €211.6 million. It employed 13,676 people in 2025, and holds a 24.1 per cent share of the Irish grocery market across around 190 stores.

The Blessington Road site has housed a supermarket since 1973. It is a sister outlet of the much larger and newer Tesco that anchors the Monread Shopping Centre, which opened in November 2010 with 266 staff and for a time was the largest Tesco store in Ireland.

The opening of Monread, along with a new Dunnes Stores off North Main Street, prompted speculation that the much smaller Blessington Road store might close, when it employed about 25 people. Tesco said at the time that the store would remain open, describing it as a long-standing part of the community.

“With ample parking, our town centre store is a long-standing part of the Naas community, we are very proud to serve a staple cohort of loyal customers from the town and surrounding communities,” the company said.

The structural driver is infrastructure renewal while trading, with shelving, storage and refrigeration replaced without a closure so that the town centre store keeps its customer base alongside the larger Monread outlet.

Penneys previously occupied a 6,100 square foot unit at the same location, which closed in April 2015, when the company said the unit was older and smaller than its Newbridge building with 49,400 square feet of selling space.

For the sector, the Naas refit shows grocers investing in older town centre stores through in-trading upgrades rather than closing them or relying on larger edge-of-town outlets.

Source: Leinster Leader / Irish Times / Irish Examiner