Online shopping has attracted new customers

The company has adopted a new "clicks and mortar" business model based round its existing network of High Street stores.

In the first six months of operations, the group said the iceland.co.uk website has generated sales equivalent to four average stores at a tenth of the cost.

The company has recorded transactional values on the internet six times higher than those through stores.

The website has also attracted a new type of customer who realised that Iceland offers more than just frozen food.

It comes on top of Iceland's other innovative ideas for developing and maintaining its customer base.

Own-label

Last month, it announced it had bought up nearly 40% of the world's organic vegetables crop to meet growing demand from customers.

From October, all frozen vegetables bought at its stores will be completely organic. They will be sold at the same price as average supermarket own-label products.

The group is also ploughing �1m into the National Trust, the UK's biggest landowner, for a project to develop more organic land.

But the group which begun life in North Wales 30 years ago has long been at the cutting edge of the shopping market.

In 1998 it hit the headlines when it became the first retailer to remove genetically-modified ingredients from its own-label products.

And last year the chain also took up the issue of additives and colourings in food.

It said that it was merely responding to consumer concerns.