Morrisons revives Safeway brand with wholesale plan

LONDON (Reuters) - British supermarket chain Morrisons plans to revive the Safeway brand, unseen for over a decade, putting the name to a range of convenience products to be sold wholesale to independent retailers. Morrisons acquired the Safeway business in 2004 and the brand disappeared from Britain's retail scene as the Safeway stores were converted to Morrisons or sold. The Bradford, northern England, based firm said on Tuesday it is developing a range of hundreds of convenience products, under the Safeway brand, to be marketed to independent stores as part of Morrisons' recently-launched wholesale business. The range will be available from early next year. Safeway-branded products will not be sold in Morrisons' own stores. The initiative is part of a drive by Chief Executive David Potts to broaden Morrisons' business. In March he targeted 50-100 million pounds of additional profit in the medium term from areas such as wholesale, online business and manufacturing. Last week Morrisons, Britain's fourth-largest supermarket group, extended its wholesale agreement with Amazon . Potts sold Morrisons' chain of 140 "M local" convenience stores in September 2015, six months after he became CEO, saying the estate was poorly located. However, he has since been dipping the supermarket chain's toe back into the still fast-growing sector. "The UK convenience market is very broad and diverse, with around three-quarters held by independents," Morrisons said. "The re-introduction of the Safeway brand will enable Morrisons to leverage its sourcing and unique food maker skills to give independent retailers’ customers access to great quality products." Morrisons also said on Tuesday it would pilot "Morrisons Daily" convenience stores in 10 Rontec petrol stations. The stores will be up to 3,000 square feet (280 square metres) and will sell branded and Morrisons' own brand products. Morrisons is already trialling a convenience offer with rival petrol forecourt operator Motor Fuel Group. Earlier this month Morrisons kept its recovery on track with a fourth straight quarter of underlying sales growth. Shares in the firm were up 1.6 percent at 11.59 GMT, taking its gains for the year so far to 49 percent. (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Adrian Croft)