The Grocer understands that Palmer & Harvey McLane is planning to launch a fourth symbol group which will run alongside Mace, Your Store and Supershop. Details are still under wraps but the new symbol will be unveiled at its ProRetail show at Telford on April 24-6. A pilot store is already in operation in Yorkshire, where the first fascia went up this week. Three additional stores will follow shortly. The offering, which is described as "a new convenience concept", will be targeted to new entrants to the market. Meanwhile P&H McLane has won a contract worth in excess of £100m to supply more than 600 company owned Shell Select stores throughout Britain. The deal means Shell will no longer run its own distribution service using Hays Distribution and this will be closed down from July. P&H will be supplying virtually all the forecourt stores' requirements with chilled deliveries including sandwiches, milk and bread six times a week, and ambient deliveries twice a week. P&H McLane national account sales director Paul Hagon commented: "This is a step change as far as we are concerned. It gives us the critical mass to provide a full chilled requirement six times a week. "We are delighted to have been successful in winning this deal and it demonstrates the applicability of P&H to the c-store sector." The decision ends several months of upheaval for Shell's distribution service. Earlier in the year it announced plans for a joint facility with BP, but that was cancelled a month later. A spokesman said: "The joint system was not giving the synergies we wanted. Over the last two years we have reduced the number of sites, and running our own distribution service was no longer viable." {{NEWS }}

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