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Troubled Nakumatt Supermarket shuts down Westgate branch


Nakumatt Supermarket Westgate has become that latest branch of the struggling retail chain to be closed.

The giant supermarket announced the branch’s closure on Saturday, just one week after the Junction Mall branch was closed.

In a public notice, Nakumatt announced that the branch will be closed from Sunday, October 8 “until further notice.

Westgate is the fourth key branch to be closed in less than two months, with Thika Road Mall (TRM) and NextGen Mall branches having been closed.

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Other branches that have been shut down is the Haile Selassie branch and the Ronald Ngala branch. The retail chain has also closed a branch in Uganda.

The Westgate branch, which opened in 2009, had been shut in 2013, after Westgate Mall was destroyed during a terrorist attack by Somalia’s Al-Shabaab militia in September of that year, in which at least 67 people died and billions of shillings lost by businesses. It resumed operations in 2015.

The family-owned business is fighting to cut back on massive debts owed to suppliers estimated at Sh15 billion as at February 2015, a situation that has been pilling pressure on its operations.