Alldays' management has abandoned any hope of selling the company and will, instead, attempt to trade out of its debt crisis. As the c-store chain revealed another huge loss, operations director Stuart Lawson said exploratory talks about selling the company, which began in November, had been terminated because none of the offers were acceptable. He said Alldays had the full backing of its banks and would be going back to basics to rebuild the company. "We have the heritage and infrastructure and the knowledge, but we need to direct it more effectively," said Lawson. He said the company had been an effective retailer in the mid-1990s, but lost focus as 32 separate regional development companies were set up to accelerate growth. "We need to get back to basics, to that original approach, with a more disciplined, centrally driven operation," he added. Alldays has now bought out 28 of the RDCs, bringing their stores under central control, with the remaining four RDCs breaking away. Lawson said that, with this restructuring of the business completed, the company was in a more robust position to drive sales growth and profits. The company has built up bank borrowings of £179m in the process of buying out the RDCs, and in the year to October 29 paid interest of £13.6m. One RDC, Anglia Convenience Stores, has broken away and is joining the Budgens Local franchise (see p16), and the three West Country RDCs controlling 53 stores have agreed a deal to buy out Alldays' share of the companies, and are currently looking to raise the finance. Excluding the West Country estate, Alldays now owns 619 stores, having sold off 32 to Costcutter in January (The Grocer, January 13, p14). Nineteen have been earmarked for disposal. Alldays pushed like for like sales up 4% in the year to October 29, and made an operating profit of £2.3m on turnover down from £572m to £538m. After exceptional charges and interest its pre-tax loss was £64m compared with £91m in 1999. {{NEWS }}