Exclusive John Wood A new c-store multiple group with an annual turnover of £50m and plans for rapid growth has been formed by a breakaway from Alldays. Conveco comprises three former joint ventures with Alldays, which last week bought out Alldays' interest in the companies. It runs 53 stores in the south west, and has a licence to trade under the Alldays fascia for a further year during which it will develop its own identity. MD Allen Hutchby said: "We will be testing a new brand strategy in about four months' time and will eliminate the Alldays name within 12 months. "When we have a new brand name, the company's name will be changed to reflect this." Conveco has agreed a supply deal with Nisa. Hutchby said: "A lot of companies were interested in supplying us and offered some very attractive deals, but they wanted us to adopt their branding. "We chose Nisa because it allowed us to maintain our own identity, and it will enable us to develop from our strong CTN background into an all round convenience operator." Hutchby said the group had financing in place to allow it to acquire about 10 stores a year. He added: "Development slowed down in the last 18 months because of problems at Alldays. "Our priority will be unhooking our systems from Alldays ­ some functions such as payroll are currently performed by them ­ but we could go ahead fairly quickly with some of the purchases at the top of our acquisitions list." For Alldays, the deal marks the completion of its programme to buy in or dispose of all its regional development companies. RDCs were joint ventures set up between Alldays and entrepreneurs. Each RDC had an exclusive geographical region, and the aim was for each to expand rapidly up to about 40 stores, when Alldays would exercise a right to buy out its partner. But many of the 32 RDCs foundered and Alldays had to buy out 28 of them, leaving it saddled with a massive £170m debt. In addition to the three West Country RDCs involved in last week's deal, one RDC in East Anglia, which owned 21 stores, bought out Alldays share and joined Budgens Local (The Grocer, March 3). {{NEWS }}