The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Super Value’s owner yesterday said he was “1,000 per cent” confident that his second Quality Supermarkets store would open at South Beach pre-Christmas, telling Tribune Business it would not believe the anti-copper theft defences he had to install.

Confirming to Tribune Business that copper wire thefts at the former City Markets’ South Beach store had cost $100,000 to fix, Rupert Roberts said he had been forced to install walls, barbed wire and cameras in a bid to combat brazen thieves.

Suggesting that copper bandits were “scouting every store, every warehouse” in Nassau as a potential target, Mr Roberts said he had told security guards for an armoured car company to “shoot them if they are caught in the act”, a suspect having been seen near Super Value’s warehouse yesterday.

Still, despite the setbacks, Mr Roberts said “there’s no question” that Quality Supermarkets’ second store - after Cable Beach - would open at South Beach before the Christmas holidays.

And with the former City Markets outlet at the Seagrapes Shopping Centre on Prince Charles Drive set to make the third Quality Supermarket in the New Year, Mr Roberts told Tribune Business his $3 million investment in the last two outlets would soon be “airborne”.

“We are on schedule to open before Christmas,” he said of South Beach. “It all depends on where the refrigeration is at, and we have some refrigeration running.

“We haven’t set a date. You have to have your refrigeration running, and we do. You have to run that for about a week, make sure you have no problems or break downs, and that everything’s perfectly fine. Then you stock up with perishables.”

Both the South Beach and Seagrapes stores require $1 million in inventory, and another $0.5 million each in equipment, to re-open, Mr Roberts said, taking his total capital outlay to $3 million.

“Approximately $3 million should see them airborne,” he told Tribune Business.”

Confirming that both stores would employ about 70 workers each, the Super Value president added that the additional business sales volume creates would require more office and warehouse staff, taking total hires to about 170.

“This country needs the jobs; I feel for the unemployed,” Mr Roberts told this newspaper. “The business community, the economy, is still in deep recession.”

Pre-Christmas 2012 is set to be a busy time on the supermarket opening front, with BISX-listed AML Foods set to open its second Solomon’s Fresh Market store at Harbour Bay within the next 10-14 days.

Gavin Watchorn, AML Foods’ president and chief executive, confirmed to Tribune Business that all 90 staff for the store had been hired.

Mr Roberts, meanwhile, said he paid no attention to the market share that his Super Value and Quality Supermarkets businesses had in the Bahamian food retail market.

“I don’t care if our market share is 1 per cent or 100 per cent - it’s serving the public,” he said. “I don’t think that [the two new stores] will give us any significant market share, contrary to what people think and believe.”

Mr Roberts added that the Seagrapes store would be easier to re-open given that its refrigeration equipment as already “hooked up”.

As for the 
“very serious” copper thefts that had hit the South Beach site, Mr Roberts said replacing what was lost would normally have taken three months, but he was able to obtain replacement equipment from Miami rather than the factory.

“You don’t know the defences we’ve had to put up,” Mr Roberts told Tribune Business. “We’ve had to put up walls, barbed wire, cameras, cages.

“Operations came to me and said: ‘We’ve done this and that, what more can we do?’ We’ve done everything we can to keep them out.

“They come in so fast and get out in several minutes. They can do $100,000 of damage in several minutes, and probably get $500 for the copper. It’s very cost effective for them, and puts us out of business.”