Argyll Foods
 |
|
| Public | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Name changed to Safeway (UK) |
| Successor | Safeway (UK) |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Defunct | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Hayes, UK |
|
Key people
|
James Gulliver, (Chairman) |
Argyll Foods plc was the 4th biggest supermarket operator in the United Kingdom, through its acquisitions of a number of smaller supermarkets. In 1987 the company acquired Safeway Inc.'s UK subsidiary and in 1996 it changed its name to Safeway plc.
The company was founded as James Gulliver Associates in 1977 by James Gulliver, a former Fine Fare Chief Executive, Alistair Grant, a marketing specialist and David Webster, a merchant banker. The founders acquired two food businesses, Morgan Edwards, a business owning the Supervalu chain of foodstores, and Louis C. Edwards, a meat business in Manchester, integrated them and then, in 1980, adopted the name Argyll Foods after Gulliver's place of birth.
In 1981 the company bought Oriel Foods, a food manufacturing and wholesaling business which the founders had briefly owned previously in the 1970s before they sold it to RCA Corporation and which owned Lo-Cost Discount Stores. Also in 1981 the company made a £91m hostile bid for Linfood Holdings, a wholesaling and retailing group which was substantially bigger than itself and owned Gateway Foodmarkets: however the bid was referred to the Monopolies Commission and did not proceed.
The company went on to buy Allied Suppliers from Cavenham Foods in 1982: this brought with it the Presto, Liptons, Galbraith and R & J Templeton chains. The company had become the fourth biggest supermarket with 923 stores.
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Wikipedia