1970

Malcolm Walker and Peter Hinchcliffe open the doors of our first Iceland store. We start selling loose frozen food to customers in Oswestry, Shropshire. Who knew what was to come?

1975

Our customers like what we do. So, we grow quickly, opening 14 further stores across North Wales and the North West.

1978

Our own-brand products hit our shelves for the first time.

We open our first purpose-built freezer centre in Stretford, Manchester.

1979

Our Head Office in Deeside, just outside Chester, opens for the first time. And we’re still here today. Although our Head Office is now a lot, lot bigger.

1984

We grow to 81 stores and become a public company with one of the most successful flotations ever seen on the London Stock Exchange.

1986

Doing it right, we remove artificial colourings, flavourings, non-essential preservatives and monosodium glutamate from our own-brand products. We’re the first UK supermarket to do it. Others took two decades to follow!

1989

David takes over Goliath as Iceland buys Bejam to grow the family and create a truly national chain of 465 stores.

1995

We grow to 752 stores and celebrate 25 consecutive years of sales and profit growth.

1996

Always one step ahead, we introduce yet another brainchild of Malcolm’s, our unique free home delivery service.

1999

Leading the way globally, we do the right thing for our customers by becoming the first food retailer to remove GM ingredients completely from our own-brand range.

We also launch the UK’s first nationwide home shopping service. Ahead of our time once again.

2000

We buy Booker, the UK’s largest cash-and-carry operator to make the most of our synergies and bigger buying power. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

2001

Our dark ages begin. Malcolm Walker and other senior managers are forced to leave the company but our troubled times don’t last long!

2005

Now named the Big Food Group, we’re brought back from the brink of bankruptcy when we return to being a private company under the leadership of Malcolm Walker and a team of former senior executives.

2006

The fightback begins and we start a spectacular turnaround almost immediately. A 10% sales decline is turned into 20% growth. We become the UK’s fastest-growing food retailer. How did we do it? We went back to putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.

2009

We open more than 70 new stores and our sales exceed £2 billion for the very first time.

2010

We celebrate our 40th anniversary with a spectacular Charity Ball that raises over £750,000 for Help for Heroes.

2012

Iceland wins our first Sunday Times Best Big Company award!

2014

Our first Food Warehouse opens its doors to offer our customers bigger choice and bigger savings in a much bigger space. And we win our second Best Big Company award!

2016

Malcolm Walker opens our new £2 million Development Kitchen at our Head Office.

2017

Our Founder & Executive Chairman Malcolm Walker receives a knighthood. We are all incredibly proud of our Sir Malcolm! In the same year Tarsem Dhaliwal was appointed Group Managing Director and then Chief Executive Officer the following year.

2018

Sir Malcolm’s son Richard makes us the first major retailer in the world to commit to eliminating plastic packaging from our own-brand products. We aim to do this by 2023.

We’re also the first UK supermarket to remove palm oil as an ingredient in all of our own-brand food.

2019

We’re voted the top UK supermarket for customer satisfaction for the second year running. We won this award thanks to the hard work of our amazing store teams who go above and beyond to provide our customers with the very best experience and make sure our stores look their best.

2020

We’re set to celebrate our 50th anniversary!