Co-op membership drive fires up mutual movement

THE Co-op doubled down on plans to boost its membership across the rest of the decade today, in a strong vote of confidence in the UK's beleaguered mutual movement.

- Michael Hunter

The grocery chain is one of the UK's best-known and longest-standing companies to be owned by members not shareholders. It set its sights on signing up eight million members by 2030, having taken the number past five million last year.

It added more than one million card-carrying Co-op member-owners in 2023, more than in the previous two years combined, its chief executive Shirine Khoury-Haq said.

She is eyeing the "substantial" increase by the start of the next decade to help stay "firmly in control of our Co-op and our destiny" she said today.

Khoury-Haq told the Standard she hoped to raise the eight million target: "The vote of confidence on the future is on the basis of having met a four-year target in one year. And I very much hope that I'll up it again."