Masters Home Improvement stores across the country will close their doors by December 11 affecting almost 8000 staff, Woolworths announced on Wednesday.
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The decision affects two Woolworths-owned hardware businesses in the Ballarat area.
Masters at Eureka Homemaker Centre, which was the only tenant of the centre until Aldi opened on the day of the announcement, will be closing.
Masters has been at Wendouree since 2013.
Metcash, owners of Mitre 10, will purchase Home Timber and Hardware for $165 million and the businesses will continue to trade.
Davies Rural and Hardware at Creswick is part of the Home Timber and Hardware franchise.
The exit from its home improvement division, which includes Masters and Home Timber and Hardware, will gain Woolworths $1.5 billion.
The division has 7,700 employees.
Masters employees will either be found jobs within the group, or paid full redundancy if suitable roles are unavailable, Woolworths said in a statement.
Woolworths has pledged to honour all customer gift cards, product warranties, returns, lay-bys and contracted home improvement projects.
A consortium of Aurrum Group, Spotlight Group and Chemist Warehouse will buy the Masters properties, including 40 freehold trading sites, 21 freehold development sites and 21 leasehold sites.
Home Consortium plans to repurpose the former Masters sites into multi‐tenant large format centres.
Woolworths announced it would exit the home hardware branch of its business in January this year.
The retail giant will report its full year results on Thursday, which were expected earlier this week to be about $1 billion.