You may have noticed some changes going on at the local Sun Mart stores in the Columbia Basin. Well if you haven't heard, 27 Sun Marts stores in southeast Washington have been sold to a Quebec based company named Couche-Tard.

Driving throughout the Tri-Cities today myself and The Brad noticed the new signage at the Edison and Canal Sun Mart and realized that not only with the name change the fuel will also be changing from Shell to Exxon. Comment below and let us know your favorite memory of the Sunmart franchise.

 

Sun-Mart-Logo
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Craig Eerkes, president and CEO of Sun Pacific Energy, has cited growing competitive issues as the reason behind the sale of the convenience stores to Couche-Tard Inc.'s Circle K Stores Inc. subsidiary.

"Our industry has reached a point where you have to be 200-plus stores in order to compete. We only have 36, and it's going to be very difficult to get to the 200-store level," he told CSP Daily News.

Sun Mart has served the Mid-Columbia, Wash. area for more than 25 years.

 

As of April 29, 2012, Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard had a network of 5,803 convenience stores, 4,216 of which include motor fuel dispensing, as well as agreements for the supply of motor fuel to 350 independent operator sites. Couche-Tard's network consists of 13 business units, including nine in the United States covering 42 states and the District of Columbia (primarily under the Circle K flag), and four in Canada covering all 10 provinces (primarily under the Mac's and Couche-Tard flags). Following its acquisition of Statoil, Couche-Tard also operates a retail network across Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltics and Russia with approximately 2,300 stores.

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