Discount supermarket Aldi has announced plans to explode its presence in towns across the country.

The budget retailer has announced its intention to have 1,000 stores in the UK by 2022 but has now said it hopes to have a minimum of 1,300 by then.

That would give it exactly the same number of stores as supermarket giant Sainsbury's - roughly one for every 30,000 people in the country, reports The Mirror .

In west London, the retailer has just seven stores, but this could be set to change with the supermarkets aggressive growth strategy.

Aldi's chief executive Matthew Barnes, speaking to the Grocer magazine about the 1,000 store goal, said: "I think there is massively more potential than that.

"If you look at the population, we think not only could we have a store in every town and city, but for every 25,000 to 30,000 people."

That could mean as many as 2,600 stores across the country.

The German chain already has 700 stores, with 300 more having received approval.

"There are 600 town locations where we don’t have a store; in many of which we could easily have two, three or four stores," Barnes added.

"We don’t have a store in Watford... that would be a six to eight Aldi town."

Aldi, which originated as Albrecht Discount in Essen, Germnay in 1913, opened its first UK store in Stetchford, Birmingham, in 1990.

The retailer's British arm only really took off after the 2008 recession, and its own-brand products and groceries have won critical acclaim.

It also became the first supermarket to pay all staff above the real living wage, with London staff earning £9.75.

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