Mark Orton and Blair Nimmo, partners with KPMG restructuring, have been appointed joint administrators to MLCG Ltd, the convenience store chain trading as My Local which has 125 trading stores across the UK and has collapsed putting some 1700 jobs at risk
Prior to the appointment of the joint administrators, the directors successfully concluded a sale of two stores. However, a total of 90 stores have now closed, resulting in a significant number of redundancies. While a further three are in the process of being closed, the remaining 32 stores remain open and continue to trade. My Local employed 1,658 people across the UK.
Mark Orton, partner at KPMG and joint administrator at My Local, said: ‘Since taking over the business in October last year, management have faced tough trading conditions and despite their best efforts to improve performance, My Local was ultimately unable to return to viability. Having explored a number of other options, the directors were unable to find a way forward and took the difficult decision to place the company into administration.’
Orton said that although the majority of stores have now closed, the administrators are in active discussions with a number of interested parties in relation to both the remaining 32 premises that are trading and a small number of those that have shut.
Recent data from the Local Data Company (LDC) suggested that convenience stores were the slowest growing segment in the food and groceries market over the last five years.
