Sinclair Collis

[BigVend]

Anyone know whats happening with them, having seen them mentioned in another thread.

On 1st October 2011 the Govt will ban Cigarette vending in pubs. Sinclair Collis took legal action to try to force a judicial review and lost the case. They have been allowed to appeal and the appeal will be held this week. I doubt their appeal will succeed in which case they are basically out of business as far as cigarette vending goes.

There has been talk of them doing sweets or nuts and some packets of nuts in cig packets were made. The question is, does anyone know what they are intending to do, are they going forward with nuts in their machines or trying sweets? It all seems unlikely to me since as we know the margins are simply a lot less than that made on a £6.50 packet of fags and the hassle of end-dates adds to complexity. I know they have Snack A Can towers on their website and also do Sahara Nuts though, so I'm curious.

Anyone heard anything?

[glennborthwick]

the local paper in wolverhampton said they would shut down but there area manager reckons they will take it to the european courts and tie it up for a year or two

[BigVend]

the local paper in wolverhampton said they would shut down but there area manager reckons they will take it to the european courts and tie it up for a year or two

If that's their plan it sounds like they aren't bothering with sweets then...

[kris@tubzbrandsltd]

Hi Guy,

I have heard from a op that is not on the forum & does not have a comp that they are due to wind up back to american soil at some stage this year.

This henses the reason why they wanted to get into snack vending..

Maybe ask their vending tower supplier whats going on as sinclair collis will only want a 6 month credit up front invoice??

you may get better answers how knows mate...

[Jon123]

Hi Guy,
I should be able to shed some light. I phoned up the regional director and offered to buy them out and they said NO but we would like to buy you out and I said NO!

If they loose this appeal they are going to go to the European court of Uman rights knowing they probably won't win but that they will get an extra 2 years of trading. I think we will see SC around for a while. However it seems that both Sweet fix and tubz vending won't supply them on principle which means they won't be getting the most competive prices which will give independents an advantage.

I think the best way to approach is that of when they do go in to liquidation in 2 years we get a group of strong operators and try and buy out the sweet/toy/pringle round and divide it up as per our location.

I know that last month they bought 3 operators and they also bought out a competitor of mine 1 year ago. I also know they pay the site comission every 6 months and there service is extremely bad to say the least.

Cheers
Jonny

[BigVend]

Jonny - Thats very interesting. Presumably they only buy pub sites though? Any idea how much they paid per site?

[kris@tubzbrandsltd]

Hi guy,

It per round to be fair... Jonny will fill you in when he bought a a fella in his catchment area

You know who i mean jonny???

[kris@tubzbrandsltd]

Guy,

The electronic machines that they used for cigs they now have a conversion kit that as you said vends packets.

I have seen these packets myself and your niggling guess is right that they will have to convert the majority of those machines.

Only salysol as far as i am aware have these packets for those machines???

[Team Vending Uk Ltd]

The sweets are crap the service is crap they used dirty taticts to kick me out of one of my best sites the ofter year by telling the landlord i had gone under.
fag machines will be banned by sept a friend of mine runs another big fag company and there plan to do other vending machines,fag machines will only be able to stay in the pub if there behind the bar and the staff are the only ones able to use the machines

[Paul@HurleysFoods]

I would hope for all vendors sake that the cigarette machine ban doesnt go through. They are a very "forceful" beast and will expand their sweet/ nut vending as quickly as they can. They get their sweets from Vending Revolution and nuts/ machines from Salysol. The nuts in cigarette packets are a good idea and are very good quality. But, knowing something of them, I would imagine that they would package their own sweets. If ourselves, sweetfix and tubs can do it, Im damn sure they can. They will drop Vending Revolution and Salysol like a stone and do their own thing at the drop of a hat. After all, Business is business........