Burnside and Braybrook Masters stores will close before Christmas, to be turned into home improvement centres or Bunnings stores.
Woolworths announced last week it will close all 82 Masters stores by December 11, seven months after it first flagged its exit from the hardware game.
A statement released last week said Woolworths would “work hard” to find Masters’ 6200 employees jobs in the group, or else pay full redundancies.
A Woolworths spokesman said the company’s priority remains “to do the right thing by our employees, suppliers and customers and shareholders”, but was unable to confirm how many Burnside and Braybrook store staff would be redeployed or made redundant.
A fire sale of all Masters’ stock, estimated to be valued at more than $500 million and including paint, timber and barbecues is due to begin this week and run “over coming months”.
The company has said it will honour all customer gift cards, product warranties, returns, lay-bys and contracted home improvement projects.
Home Consortium (Arrium Group, Spotlight Group and Chemist Warehouse) will buy 61 Masters stores and 21 development sites. Metcash will acquire the Home Timber & Hardware Group for $165 million. Proceeds from the three-way deal are expected to be about $1.5 billion
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Alexandra Laskie
