Will your local Albertsons be sold? Nine New Mexico stores to be divested as part of Kroger-Albertsons merger
Albertsons Market located at 8100 Ventura Street NE in Albuquerque on Wednesday. Nine Albertsons and Kroger grocery stores in New Mexico could be sold.
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Your local grocery store could be getting a new owner.
As part of a proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons, the companies are planning to sell off hundreds of stores nationwide to C&S Wholesale Grocers, which owns the Piggly Wiggly brand.
Spokespeople for Kroger representing New Mexico stores did not return voicemails left by the Journal.
Less than 10 locations in New Mexico will be up for sale.
It’s a smaller number than was once proposed. Last year, Kroger and Albertsons said that 12 stores in the state would be put up for sale.
The recently published list of locations included 579 total around the country — a higher number than was floated last year.
The list identified nine locations in New Mexico, including four Albertsons in Albuquerque and one in Rio Rancho. The other Albertsons and Safeway locations are in Farmington, Los Lunas and Taos.
The merger has drawn the ire of some local officials. New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver signed a letter last fall to urge regulators to reject the plan.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez joined a federal lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission alleging the merger would essentially constitute a monopoly. Torrez warned that the merger could increase food prices for consumers, although the companies have disputed that.
Litigation is ongoing, said New Mexico Department of Justice communications director Lauren Rodriguez, but an administrative hearing before a FTC judge is set for later this month, and a hearing for a preliminary injunction will be heard in federal court in August.
Rodriguez said the proposed sales don’t address the problems the office is raising in the lawsuit.
“The proposed divestiture does not alleviate the anticompetitive harms that will occur if the merger is allowed to proceed, particularly in markets — including Santa Fe — where Kroger and Albertsons compete but the divestiture plan fails to address,” Rodriguez said in an email to the Journal.
No store locations in Santa Fe are expected to be sold.
She added that C&S’s business model — mainly wholesale — does not set it up for success in taking over the off-loaded stores.
“There is a high likelihood of the divested stores failing,” Rodriguez said. “If that happens, consumers and workers will bear the costs, not Kroger or Albertsons.”
