Ballarat Masters Home Improvement could close before Sunday’s nationwide cut off if stock levels continue to drop, a Woolworths spokesman said.
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There are reports some of the 63 Masters stores around the country have begun to close following a four month fire sale, which has so far stripped the Ballarat store of all but a few miscellaneous items.
Workmen have begun dismantling shelves at the Eureka Homemaker Centre store, with the majority of the store cordoned off from shoppers.
Woolworths announced it would be clearing $700 million in stock in August after failing to find a buyer for the hardware chain.
All stores were slated to close on or before Sunday, December 11.
The sale has been dogged by customer complaints with Masters cutting direct phone lines to individual stores and removing prices from their website.
“We are currently selling through the last of the stock meaning the Ballarat store may cease trading earlier than expected over the weekend,” the spokesman said.
Staff will be paid up until the end of December regardless of when the store closes, he said.
They have also been offered redeployment within Woolworths.
Each Masters store has about 100 employees.
Masters was the sole tenant of the Eureka Homemaker Centre before Aldi moved in in August, on the same day Woolworths announced it would be exiting the hardware sector.
The Masters site will be taken over by Home Consortium, which includes the owners of Spotlight, Anaconda and Chemist Warehouse, and repurposed into multi‐tenant large format centre.
Home Consortium is yet to name the tenants committed to the site.
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