Associated British Foods is buying Littlewoods Stores Holdings Ltd for £409 million (€595 million) in a drive to take its Primark discount-clothing brand to towns and cities where it does not operate.

"The estate we are buying is close to unique. Estates like this don't come up very often. They are good high-street locations and they are quite big stores," ABF chief executive George Weston said yesterday.

"Primark is successful in the places it trades. It just currently has a lot of gaps where it doesn't trade, and this deal allows us to fill a lot of those gaps," Mr Weston said.

The cash acquisition by the London-based foods group includes 120 Littlewoods stores around Britain but not the Littlewoods home-shopping business.

Littlewoods is owned by twin brothers David and Frederick Barclay, the entrepreneurs who also own the Ritz Hotel in London and the Telegraph newspaper group.

ABF, which has 122 stores and bought six stores from bankrupt retail chain Allders earlier this year, intends to keep 40 per cent of the retail selling space being acquired and to sell remaining stores to other retailers.

The Littlewoods stores business employs 2,500 staff with 270 of these working in the company's Liverpool head office.

This will be closed. Weston said he hoped many staff would be taken on within the enlarged Primark business.