We talk to Nigel Briggs – Managing Director of Musgrave Retail Partners Northern Ireland.

Can you give Ulster Grocer an update on the J&J Haslett acquisition and the progress with the integration of Mace under the Musgrave banner?

We are now well advanced on integrating the J&J Haslett business into the two Northern Ireland Musgrave businesses – Mace to Musgrave Retail Partners and Holmes to Musgrave Wholesale Partners. Our commitment to retain and develop the Mace brand in Northern Ireland and to more effectively support all of our retail partners to compete effectively in the market is being underpinned by a number of key initiatives in the areas of people, brand and supply chain.

A lot of focus has gone into developing the best team to support what will be a significantly enlarged Musgrave Retail Partners business post-integration, including a widened Leadership Team, a dedicated Mace Sales Team and a better resourced and structured Trading Team. We have also worked hard at establishing a ‘new’ culture and ways of working for the integrated business.

To optimise support for our Mace, Centra and SuperValu partners, we plan to integrate all of our support office staff into one facility at the Musgrave Retail Partners’ offices at Dargan Drive. Relocation of the Mace team from the Haslett’s office at Derriaghy to Dargan Drive will commence in January. The Trading, Marketing, Sales and Business Development teams will be the first to move, with the other functions following on a phased basis through the first quarter of 2009.

What improvements have you made to the supply chain?

We’ve been working on developing a better fresh food solution for our Mace retail partners who, up until now, have had a large dependence on van sales, with only a limited range of largely long-life chill products being provided through central distribution. By providing a fully centralised fresh food offering to Mace, similar to that which has been enjoyed by SuperValu and Centra for a number of years, we see significant potential to increase retail sales and profitability as a result of a wider range, better availability and longer shelf life.

Over the past couple of months a comprehensive, fully-centralised fresh food offer has been made available to our Mace partners. This move from direct supplier deliveries to central distribution does require changes in store operational practises and will therefore take some time to fully bed down, but we are very encouraged by the initial response from Mace retailers and the positive commercial impact of this initiative.

Have you made any developments in the area of frozen distribution?

The combined scale of an integrated SuperValu, Centra and Mace business has supported our investment in a new frozen food distribution facility. Mace retailers are currently being serviced with frozen food from a somewhat dated Haslett’s-operated facility in Derriaghy, with SuperValu and Centra retailers being supplied by a third-party. We plan to consolidate our frozen food supply chain at Dargan by investing £1.65m in a new state-of-the-art 14,000 sq. ft facility to supply all three of our brands in Northern Ireland.

The build programme started in October and will be completed by mid-February, with first deliveries to SuperValu and Centra stores scheduled for the end of March and Mace to follow in June. Frozen deliveries will be made on the existing chill fleet through an integrated transport schedule, which will optimise efficiency and minimise costs. As well as enhancing our retail service model, this investment will enable us to greatly improve the consumer offer on the frozen food category in terms of product range and promotions as well as retail pricing and margins.

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