Article: Sunday special: Ian Hunt's 19.7m [pounds sterling] business is the last independent chain of grocers left in Wales. (The Grocer top 50).(Filco Foods)(Brief Article)

A regional trade association for independent retailers has never existed in Wales, unlike Scotland or Northern Ireland, and the substitute--a reliable local grapevine--has been drying up. But Ian Hunt, managing director of South Glamorgan based Filco Foods, has fond memories of that not-too-distant era when the grapevine was active, there were some "really good grocers" and, he says, even a "Welsh mafia of Spar retailers".

But in the space of 10 years they have all sold tip and sailed away on retirement yachts, leaving him to preside over the last of the Welsh independent grocery chains, founded in 1946, alongside what Hunt describes as "very smart single ...

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