German discount supermarket Aldi has unveiled plans to pump £600m into expanding its store network over the next two years.

The ambitious plan to take on rivals like Tesco and Sainsbury’s will see 130 new stores opened and the UK workforce reach 35,000.

Aldi has boomed in recent years, and in April it overtook Waitrose as the UK’s sixth-biggest supermarket, with 5.3% of the market share.

It has focused on smaller-scale stores looking at build costs of £1m-£3m for each store rather than the £10m+  favoured by the other chains.

The supermarket chain is also planning several distribution centres to support the growth programme.

Birmingham contractor DSP Construction Management is about to start work on a 600,000 sq ft regional distribution centre just south of the A6, near Bolton where Imtech is on board as building services contractor.

Aldi is also presently planning to build a similar regional distribution centre at Sheerness in Kent and a major 1.2m sq ft logistic centre at Sawley Crossroads in Derby.

These schemes have been design by Birmingham-based STOAS Architects.