Kmart will open its largest New Zealand store at Auckland’s Westgate next month, introducing a new store layout designed to improve the shopping experience while helping the retailer strengthen security against shoplifting.
According to a report by 1News, the 6700-square-metre store will be the first Kmart in New Zealand to use the retailer’s “Plan C+” format. Under the new layout, checkouts will be positioned at the front of the store rather than in the middle, alongside upgraded product displays, new service options and additional technology.
The store will open at 8 am on September 10 and operate 24 hours a day, creating more than 200 jobs. It will become Kmart’s third 24-hour New Zealand store, joining outlets at Manukau and Sylvia Park in Auckland, 1News has reported.
Kmart New Zealand managing director Aleks Spaseska said the Westgate store represented a major investment in the local market.
"As the first New Zealand store to feature our Plan C+ format, Westgate brings together a more convenient shopping experience with the everyday low prices New Zealand families know and trust," she said, as quoted by 1News.
"New Zealand is an important part of Kmart's growth story, and the opening of our Westgate store demonstrates our ongoing commitment to investing in the market for the long term," v has quoted.
The Westgate location was first announced in 2024 and was described as Kmart’s most ambitious New Zealand launch, with the retailer’s largest sales floor in the country.
The store will have more than 600 parking spaces, including on-grade and undercroft parking, as well as a dedicated all-weather direct-to-boot collection facility.
According to a report by 1News, the Plan C+ format has already been introduced at several Kmart stores in Australia. It moves cash registers back towards store exits and incorporates entry and exit gates.
Spaseska told analysts in June that 16 of about 300 Australian Kmart stores had been converted to the new format, with plans for 40 stores to operate under the layout by the end of the 2026/27 financial year, as reported by 1News.
Kmart had previously moved its checkouts from store exits to central locations between 2012 and 2015, a change that attracted criticism from some customers.
Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said the new layout could help Kmart improve customer flow while giving the retailer greater control over goods leaving its stores.
"They can move customers through more efficiently, manage the flow of goods and people out of the store so that people are only leaving the store with what they've paid for," she said, 1News has quoted.
Young also said advances in technology could help reduce theft and errors at self-service checkouts.
"There's technology improving all the time around the alerts and the ability to stop the customer continuing to process goods if they think that an error has been made," as quoted by 1News.
She said New Zealand shoppers remained divided over self-service checkouts.
"There are lots of people that like to be able to go in and control their own experience; they don't necessarily want to have a long conversation at the checkout," 1News has quoted.
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