Reports of knife crime – and tragic deaths resulting from attacks – are becoming a more and more regular part of our daily life. These attacks, particularly those involving young people, have an impact on us all.
At Asda, we strongly believe in offering customer choice, but we're also keenly aware of the danger of these items falling into the wrong hands.
Although supermarket knife sales are not the source of the issue around knife crime, as concerns continue to grow we believe there is a step we can take to support those looking at how to bring this issue under control. That step is the decision to remove all single kitchen knives from sale in all our stores by the end of April 2019.
Whilst our sales of knives are relatively small, our data shows knife theft is most common in single products and that is why we have chosen to remove these items from our stores. Customers will still be able to purchase larger multipack sets, which will be security tagged for added protection.
Asda has been an active participant in restricting the sale of knives for a number of years already. We were one of the first retailers to sign up to the Home Office voluntary agreement on a set of principles to prevent the sale of knives to under 18s and to ensure that knives are safely displayed and packaged. However, we felt now was the right time to take it further in order to play our small part in trying to make the communities we serve safer for all.
See the announcement here.
