The supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has announced it will raise £445 million to help accelerate its growth plans.

A statement posted on the company’s website this morning claimed the money would be raised via a placing of new shares and an offering of convertible bonds.

The proceeds from the capital raisings will be used to enable the supermarket chain to accelerate its growth strategy, increasing it planned gross space growth over the next two years from ten per cent to 15 per cent.

Sainsbury’s also announced it will add 2.5 million sq ft of additional selling space by March 2011.

Commenting on the announcement, Sainsbury’s chief executive, Justin King said: “Over the past four years we have reinvigorated our business and demonstrated the strength of Sainsbury’s brand with 18 consecutive quarters of like-for-like sales growth.

“The fund raising announced today will provide us with the financial flexibility to take advantage of current opportunities to grow our business further and faster.

“We can speed up our growth in areas of lower market share, maintain the strength of our balance sheet and invest in the long-term growth of the business.”

A trading update also released today for the 12 weeks up to June 13th showed like-for-like sales grew 7.8 per cent due to increased customer numbers and ‘continued growth in basket size’.

The statement added an agreement had been reached to acquire nine stores from Co-operative Group for a total consideration of £29 million.