Sainsbury’s have reported a pre-tax loss of £290m for the 28 weeks to 27 September 2014 after incurring a charge of £628m following the write-off of the value of 40 existing stores and scrapping plans to build an additional 40 stores.

Group sales remained relatively flat for the period at £12.7bn, although like-for-like sales were back 2.1%. Underlying profit before tax stood at £375m, a 6.3% decrease on the same period last year.

Sainsbury’s is the third-largest supermarket in Britain, but has struggled to deal with the rapid change in consumer habits while losing market share to the German discounters, Lidl and Aldi.