LIDL IS OPENING its first wave of stores in the US this summer ahead of schedule, with plans to open up to 100 locations across the east coast of America within a year.

The details of the expansion, announced today, come as Wal-Mart and traditional grocery chains already are seeing a stronger threat from German low-priced retailer Aldi, which has been aggressively expanding in the US.

Aldi has been challenging other US chains by adding items to include gluten-free products and fresh produce.

Lidl’s first 20 US stores will be opening in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, where the company established its first US headquarters in 2015.

Originally, it planned to open its first batch of US stores no later than 2018. Lidl operates about 10,000 stores in 27 countries.

Both Lidl and Aldi have been aggressively expanding in Europe. In Ireland, they unveiled plans last year to add another 600 employees to its workforce.

It currently operates 146 stores across Ireland and has around 4,000 employees.

In the United Kingdom, a fierce price war has hurt Wal-Mart’s Asda business as well as traditional local retailers.

Aldi, which opened its first store in the U.S. in 1976, now has more than 1,600 stores in the US and plans to increase that to nearly 2,000 by the end of 2018.

It announced earlier this month that it was spending $1.6 billion on remodeling more than 1,300 of them.

With reporting from Sean Murray

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