Morrisons is set to close 11 supermarkets after announcing a 35% decline in first half profits to £117m.

The store closures follow yesterday’s announcement of the sale of 140 M Local convenience stores to a group led by industry veteran Mike Greene.

For the six months to 2 August, Morrisons announced a 2.7% drop in like-for-like sales excluding fuel, while total turnover fell 5.1% to £8.1bn.

The group has set out six key objectives to revive its fortunes: to be more competitive; to serve customers better; find local solutions; develop popular and useful services; to simplify and speed up the organisation; and to make the core supermarkets strong again.

Chief executive David Potts said: “The immediate priority is to deliver a better shopping trip to stabilise trading performance. Our six strategic priorities will then deliver improvement in the core supermarkets, where we have the greatest opportunity.

“It will be a long journey. We approach the challenge with energy, confidence and many strengths, particularly our strong balance sheet and cash flow, which enables investment in improving the customer shopping trip.”