Gubay set for Irish supermarket battle

Press, 26 February 1977, Page 22

Gubay set for Irish supermarket battle

Ry SELWYN PARKER, in Dublin Albert Gubay, the former Kwik Save chief who set up the Three Guys supermarket chain in Auckland, will open his first supermarket in Dublin in July. After that, according to the Gubay formula, stores will open at the rate of about one a month until the city is ringed by 10 to 15 shopping centres. The shopping centre at Firhouse is already halfbuilt and construction has started on Ireland’s largest single warehouse — a 18.600 sq m. (200,000 sq. ft> monster in the south•uestem suburb of Tailaght that will also house Gubay’s Dublin head office. Since first arriving here discreetly less than a year ago under the cover of Tancot, Ltd. the Welsh millionaire's Three Guys operation has acquired seven shopping centre sites, most of them in growth suburbs or work-ing-class areas where the cut-price formula is expected to be most successThree Guys big battle at the moment is to win planning permission for a I the sites already acquired. So far the company has planning goahead on four. and appears to be talking

round the respective councils on the others. Dublin Corporation, m particular, fought Mr Gubay tooth and nail on several sites — and has demanded that he submit revised drawings on at least one. Prodded by Ireland’s existing supermarket chains, such as Superquinn, some councillors have bitterly opposed the Welsh interloper, claiming that his rock-bottom prices will only create unemployment. Most housewives, however. disagree. xMr Gubav's promise to undercut the local competition by ‘between 15 and 20 per cent” interests them greatly. In mu c h-publicised slanging matches with Mr Gubay, Ireland's major su p e r-marketeers have claimed that he will “dump foreign goods” on the local market, or else doesn’t mean his promise to sell cheap. All of this fails to worry the 48-year-old Welshman. He has said he will stock exactly the same brands as his com petitors but will undercut them by “being more efficient.” The cut-price formula will be based on the New Zealand success Mr Gubay says he will stock about 1000 lines — much less than the other supermarkets — and sell them in no-frills stores.

The key speaker in a Dublin seminar a few days ago run by “Checkout” magazine, he said: “I don’t build palaces; but then I don’t charge palace prices.”

Although he will probably retain official residence in his Isle of Man tax haven, from where he commutes each week-end, Mr Gubay will still live most of the time in Dublin

His company has already spent .$150,000 on six houses in Dublin — and one of them is for Mr | Gubay. He will not say which one because, he says, his arrival has created so much interest that he is plagued by Irishmen offering him sites all over the country. He would get no privacy at all.