Costcutter
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Costcutter is a franchise banner in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Poland under which there are supermarkets and local and urban convenience stores. The banner also has its own brand of goods and products which are sold alongside Nisa Today branded products and the usual national and local brands found in any other supermarket or convenience stores.
Costcutter has stores in all regions of the UK and right across Ireland in both urban and rural locations. As a group, Costcutter is continuing to expand (as of 2005) with its stores becoming more accessible to wider proportion of the UK and Irish public.
As of December 2006, Costcutter (Ireland) was owned by James A. Barry and Co.[1]
Costcutter was founded in 1986 by Colin Graves.[2] As of November 2006, there were some 1,400 stores in the franchise.[2] In May 2006, the majority of stores were in the United Kingdom, with 65 stores in the Republic of Ireland and 52 in Poland.[3]
Many locations in the UK were formerly SPAR locations whose owners switched to Costcutter because of cheaper franchising fees. SPAR is still a major competitor and has 2,535 stores in the UK, 422 stores in Ireland, 50 stores in Poland and 13,686 overall locations worldwide in 32 countries including locations as far afield as Australia, South Africa, Japan and China.
A proposed merger with Nisa-Today's collapsed in 2006 after concerns about a cartel.[2] which were reported to the UK Office of Fair Trading by members of Nisa-Today's who opposed the merger. These claims were eventually proved to be unfounded and no action was taken by the OFT.
Bibby Distribution are the logistical provider for Nisa-Today's and therefore also Costcutter. In late August 2007, Bibby announced a 51% purchase of Costcutter.[citation needed] The current Costcutter board are to stay in place and see the running of the business. Bibby Distribution will continue to deliver goods to Nisa and Costcutter stores from their base in Scunthorpe, throughout the UK and through a third party distributor in Northern Ireland.
They also broadcast a radio station for use in their stores called In Tune which although not part of the Sky EPG can be listened to by manually tuning it in: Eurobird 1 11623H 27500 2/3
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ "Barry's profits flat", The Daily Mail, 29 December 2006
- ^ a b c "Nisa's chairman to step down", Yorkshire Post, 2 November 2006
- ^ "Local retailers planning merger", BBC News, 10 May 2006
[edit] External links
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