All Retailers articles – Page 14
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News
Journey to the top of the indies
It came as a surprise to many when early in 2018 the Motor Fuel Group announced its acquisition of MRH at the time the UK’s biggest independent fuel retailing group. But for the management team at MFG it was the realisation of yet another great opportunity on a journey which ...
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News
Signing up to growth
Top 50 Indie Refuel & Go has increased like-for-like sales by 10% since it relaunched its eight forecourt sites in London and the Home Counties under the Spar fascia. The company now has eight Spar-branded stores supplied by Blakemore Trade Partners. It has 10 sites altogether two are leased to ...
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Pioneering site leads the field
When the Forecourt Trader of the Year award winner was finally announced as the A26 Tannaghmore site in Northern Ireland, the stage at the glamorous Hilton on Park Lane erupted in applause and ticker tape, and everyone on the Maxol table fell off their seats. They had been busy celebrating ...
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Local attraction
On a swelteringly hot day at the end of June, the inhabitants of Harleston, Norfolk, were presented with a great community asset in the form of a fabulous new forecourt and convenience store, developed by Lawrences Garages (London) Ltd. The official opening of the £1.25m redevelopment now known as Lawrences ...
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Neighbourhood service
A chance meeting at the Top 50 Indies dinner in 2017 with a Phillips 66 executive led to Tariq Majid, director at Majid & Sons, to agree a new supply deal with the Jet brand. Three of the company’s sites, which have a combined volume of 5mlpa, were recently reimaged ...
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Raising the roof at Barton Mills
It’s been a long time closed, but last month the MRH team proudly opened the doors on its glorious 6mlpa site at Barton Mills, on the busy Fiveways Roundabout on the A11 near Bury St Edmunds. It is the last major development currently planned following MFG’s acqusition of the company ...
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News
Dynamic retailers invest in growth
Just as the ink was drying on this year’s Top 50 Indies report, the sector demonstrated how dynamic it is when the number two ranked MFG agreed a deal to take over its bigger rival MRH, which was occupying the number one spot. The deal will create a company with ...
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News
Pastures green
If you want to be inspired about the potential of forecourt retailing, you could do no worse than a visit to our friends in the Republic of Ireland, where Forecourt Trader was recently taken on a whistle-stop tour of some of the brightest and best sites around Dublin. Many of ...
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News
Back in the game
Former Top 50 Indie Hockenhull Garages (HGS) has opened a new petrol station and convenience store in South Wigston, Leicester. It is the first forecourt development for the company’s founder and chairman, Peter Hockenhull, since he came out of retirement at the age of 76 to assist in running the ...
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News
Brothers in Euro vision
While many forecourt retailers fuss over the high prices of sites in the UK thwarting growth, Blackburn-based Euro Garages continued its march into Europe with the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s retail assets in Germany last month. In one fell swoop Euro Garages which operates under its parent, EG Group Ltd, as ...
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News
Applegreen - winner by design
M1 Lisburn was designed to be bigger and better than anything Applegreen had done before, and so it proved. At the Forecourt Trader awards ceremony in September, the company walked off with the biggest prize the Forecourt Trader of the Year trophy. "We were absolutely delighted to win this award ...
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News
A merry dance
You know standards are high at the forecourt at Toomey’s Southend Motor Village when you arrive and spot the manager Mark Dance straightening a sign on one of the petrol pumps. It’s not so much that he’s adjusting the sign, more that he’s wearing suit trousers, a shirt, tie and ...
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News
Bonds that drive profit
With eight Texaco branded service stations and convenience stores, 14 workshops, a major wholesale tyre business, a rental property business, emus, deer, cattle and around 800 new-born lambs to contend with, it’s not surprising that Richard Whittemore is up before dawn most mornings. While Richard’s main focus is his automotive ...
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Rising to the challenge
There have been many petrol filling station knock-down-rebuilds which have transformed the existing site into a modern-day forecourt operation, but perhaps few have required quite such vision and creativity to maximise the opportunity, as the owner of Abbeyside Services in Selby, Nick Baker. He has built an imposing two-storey modern ...
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NewsACS calls for restraint from Low Pay Commission
The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has called on the Government to do more to help with the rising cost of employment and to ensure that wage rates do not have a negative impact on job prospects.In its annual submission to the Low Pay Commission, ACS has raised concerns about ...
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News
P&G hosts inaugural ’Shelfhelp’ forum to help retailers win in convenience
P&G has reaffirmed its commitment to the convenience and impulse channel by hosting its first ShelfHelp forum. The event brought together the company’s ’ShelfHelpers’ retailer ambassadors, all selected by P&G at the start of the year, to work in collaboration with P&G’s convenience teams across its core household categories - ...
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News
Driving retail
As the first of the MRH/Co-op trial sites opened last month in High Road, Eastcote, west of London it was a great moment for MRH chief executive Karen Dickens and her team, who are on a focused mission to upgrade and grow the company’s network. The opening ...
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10 years in the making
Last month East Yorkshire-based Jos Richardson & Son proudly marked 125 years in business, with a celebratory lunch with family, friends and business associates. It was a great occasion and coincided with the official launch of the company’s new £4m service station and truck- stop development on Junction 36 of ...
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Blood, sweat and hopefully no tears
Regular readers of Forecourt Trader will be familiar with the long-running saga of Tollgate Services, a Shell site just off the A2 at Gravesend. They will also therefore be familiar with the determination of its owner, Simon Privett, to defy plans by BP to build a service station and drive-thru ...
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News
King of the road
Aas the news broke that Rontec was extending its partnership with Morrisons with plans for a further 40 Morrisons Daily convenience stores across its network, I was in the hot seat literally in the back of the car with Rontec’s legendary chairman and chief executive, Gerald Ronson, on one of ...