LONDON: British retailer John Lewis is writing down property assets it no longer plans to develop for its upmarket grocer Waitrose and investing in technology, logistics and pay as it responds to shifting shopping habits, it said on Thursday.

John Lewis said Britain’s vote to leave the European Union had little noticeable impact on sales so far, but the full impact of that was not yet clear and it expected “trading pressures” to continue into 2017.

As it responds to big changes in retail, John Lewis said it had decided to prioritise investment in technology, its distribution network and pay, while focusing on sprucing up existing Waitrose stores rather than opening new ones.

Property write downs caused an exceptional charge of £25 million (Dh121.4 million, $33.10 million) that pushed first-half pretax profit down 74.6 per cent to 56.9 million pounds. Excluding the charge, pretax profit fell 14.7 per cent to 81.9 million pounds.

Other British supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s have also made property write downs as they closed some stores and halted plans to open others as consumers switch from big weekly shops at out-of-town hypermarkets to buying more online and locally.

Waitrose’s premium offering has helped it gain market share as other British supermarkets have lost out to the rise of discounters Aldi and Lidl, which has pushed prices down across the sector.

However, Aldi has now overtaken Waitrose as Britain’s sixth-biggest grocer and its market share has slipped slightly in recent months to 5.1 per cent.

John Lewis said like-for-like sales at Waitrose fell by 1.0 per cent in the first half, while grocery sales online rose 4.3 per cent. For the first six weeks of the second half from Aug. 1, Waitrose gross sales rose a like-for-like 1.4 per cent.

John Lewis said Waitrose plans more in-store cafés, bakeries, wine and juice bars after “hospitality” sales rose 7.1 per cent in the first half.

It will also invest more in the Waitrose 1 premium range, which saw sales up 19.4 per cent.

As Britain’s leading department store business seeks to keep pace with online rivals such as Amazon, John Lewis said investment in technology and distribution now represented 55 per cent of total capital spending, up from 48 per cent last year.

Department store sales rose a like for like 3.1 per cent in the first half, but growth slowed to 0.7 per cent in the first six weeks of the second half.