AF Blakemore & Son Ltd, the UK’s largest Spar retailer and wholesaler and one of the country’s most prominent family-owned businesses, is deepening its investment with RELEX to unify its retail planning operations. Building on its successful use of RELEX for wholesale and distribution centre forecasting and replenishment, AF Blakemore will expand this to its retail business and implement RELEX space planning capabilities to drive seamless, end-to-end planning across its convenience store network.
This expansion, supported by RELEX partner Supply Chain Company, will empower AF Blakemore to boost product availability, minimise waste, and streamline operations, delivering a more efficient and responsive shopping experience.
Operating nearly 250 SPAR stores across England and Wales and supporting a large network of independent retailers, AF Blakemore plays a key role in local communities. Its stores offer essential services and a wide selection of fresh, chilled, and locally sourced products.
Convenience retailers must balance meeting fast-changing customer demand while minimising shrink and managing constrained shelf space. AF Blakemore’s expanded use of RELEX’s unified, AI-driven platform, including weather-aware forecasting, seasonal planning, and automated replenishment, will enable faster, smarter decisions across the product lifecycle. This allows for dynamic adaptation to changing conditions and demand shifts, better promotion planning, and more effective clearance strategies.
The RELEX AI-driven unified platform also brings powerful planogram optimisation at both store and cluster levels. This alignment between supply chain and store execution enables scalable expansion into trade partner locations, with consistent performance and efficiency across formats.
“Our collaboration with RELEX has already driven significant value in our distribution and wholesale operations,” said Marc Deakin, supply chain director at AF Blakemore. “Extending this success into retail is a natural next step. Unified planning will not only improve availability and efficiency, it will also provide us with a toolkit to expand across our trade partner stores.”
“We are thrilled to partner with AF Blakemore and RELEX on this transformative project,” said Henk Jan Rijkse, Director and Founder, Supply Chain Company. “By connecting supply chain and store-level planning, we see tremendous opportunities to unlock value. With our expertise in SPAR implementations, we are confident in delivering tangible benefits, quickly together.”
“AF Blakemore is a fantastic example of how a unified planning approach can transform convenience retail,” said Jason Berry, senior vice president, EMEA, RELEX Solutions. “We’re proud to expand our partnership and bring integrated, AI-driven planning to more parts of their business, delivering measurable results every step of the way.”
