Roches Stores has been heading in this direction for some time, writes Barry O'Halloran, as the Irish retail group intends to focus on fashion and homeware.
The latest change in the grocery market looks more like a round of musical chairs than a radical shake-up.
Its end result will not look unlike the scenario that at least some people were painting in 1998, when one of the prime movers in yesterday's announcement, Roches Stores, joined forces with Musgrave.
Roches transferred all of its supermarkets to SuperValu, a Musgrave franchise, at that time. Yesterday, it announced that it intends transferring two of them to fellow Musgrave partner, Caulfield McCarthy, and another two to Marks & Spencer (M&S).
The British player will get the supermarkets in Eyre Square, Galway and the Frascati Centre in Blackrock, Dublin.
In 1998, there was speculation that another British chain, Sainsbury, would buy Roches' entire food business as a way of setting up shop in the State.
Roches has been heading in this direction for some time. In a statement yesterday, it said that it intended to focus on fashion and homeware. It's already operating in-store partnerships with Zara, Pull and Bear and Springfield, among others, and has been making signals about developing further links like these.
Last October, it paid €50 million to buy back the Frascati Centre, a property it sold a decade earlier for €10 million. It was reported at the time that it intended expanding the centre.Yesterday's move will presumably allow it to concentrate its energies on this, rather than a relatively small food business, and on becoming a force in fashion and homeware.
It also makes it landlord to one of its competitors, M&S, which intends reopening the Galway and Blackrock supermarkets in June to sell both food and clothes.
While Marks & Spencer has been having a torrid time of it in Britain, it says its Irish operations have been doing very well. However, its British reserve comes into play when it comes to discussing figures, so we don't actually know what that means in euros and cents.
But the deal looks even more significant for the Co Wexford-based Caulfield McCarthy Group. It will get two SuperValu franchises in prime locations in Cork from Roches Stores.
Caulfield will add these to its existing seven SuperValus and three shopping centres. It will bring its annual sales to €140 million from €100 million.
That makes it the fastest growing independent in the business, and it looks like it will certainly not be found standing the next time the music stops playing.
