Edinburgh Iceland to close doors permanently as demand for online orders surges

An Iceland in Piershill will close to customers from the beginning of August to focus on picking items for online orders.

The Portobello Road Iceland will close to customers (Pic: Google Maps)

The Iceland shop on Piershill’s Portobello Road is set to close its doors to shoppers next month as the company use it to meet demand of online orders in the Capital.

Speaking about the closure of the Portobello Road store a spokesman for Iceland said: “We will be closing this store to customers from August 1 so that it can focus entirely on the picking and delivery of online orders. This will help us to meet the huge increase in demand for our online shopping service in the Edinburgh area.”

The store will remain closed permanently.

The budget supermarket introduced priority access for elderly and vulnerable shoppers in March for the first hour of opening, and dedicated the final hour of trading to NHS staff as the coronavirus pandemic began and customers were stockpiling.

However, The Sun reported on Friday that priority access for those customers has now been scrapped.

A statement on the company website said the priority period is no longer required as elderly and vulnerable have largely stayed at home and stock levels have normalised.