The German retailer is currently the UK‘s fifth-biggest grocer and its expansion plan could see it challenge the dominance of Tesco or Sainsbury’s.
They currently have 700 stores in the UK, and another 300 sites have already been approved taking it to its target of 1,000 by 2022.
Aldi is looking to open 130 new stores in the UK over the next two years, creating 5,000 new jobs and 27 of those will be in Wales.
It will be creating three new warehouses to add to the 2017 Cardiff site which created 440 jobs.
The latest store expansion announcement came as Aldi revealed that sales in the UK and Ireland hit a record £10.2 billion in 2017, although UK profits fell for a third consecutive year in the year to 31 December 2016 which reveals just how tight margins are.
The big four supermarkets are already planning to head off competition from the two German discounters, Aldi and Lidl, with Tesco revealing its own discounter with the recently launched chain of ‘Jacks’.
Lidl currently has 710 nation-wide but both Aldi and Lidl lag well behind the big four in terms of store numbers: Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, has 3,739 stores.
Aldi first came to the UK in 1990, and by 2015 it overtook Waitrose in terms of market share.
Earlier this year in February, Aldi overtook the Co-op to become the UK‘s fifth-biggest grocer.