LONDON (Reuters) - British convenience retailer McColl's (L:MCLSM) said on Monday disruption to supplies caused by the November collapse into administration of Palmer & Harvey (P&H) dented sales at the end of 2017 and the early part of 2018.
McColl's, which trades from 1,611 convenience stores and newsagents in Britain, said it put in place contingency arrangements, entering into a new short-term supply contract with Nisa in early December.
It also began a new supply partnership with Morrisons (L:MRW), Britain's No. 4 supermarket group, earlier than previously scheduled to supply affected stores with tobacco.
However, the disruption still impacted its sales performance - like-for-like sales for the 11 weeks to Feb. 11 were down 2.2 percent.
McColl's said that in January, as planned, it launched the new Safeway range, supplied by Morrisons, of around 400 products to 102 stores as part of a phased rollout to over 1,300 stores.
"We have been pleased with early customer reaction," McColl's said.
For the year to Nov. 26 2017 McColl's reported a 4 percent rise in pretax profit to 18.4 million pounds ($25.8 million) on total revenue up 19.1 percent to 1.13 billion pounds. Like-for-like sales rose 0.1 percent.
Shares in McColl's, up 38 percent over the last year, closed Friday at 249 pence, valuing the business at 288 million pounds.