In May 1994 the Company changed its name to Somerfield plc.

Then on 21 December 2005 Somerfield plc was acquired by a consortium consisting of Apax Partners, Barclays Capital and the Tchenguiz Family Trust, at which time the name of the group changed to Somerfield Ltd.

Local residents have long been lobbying for flood defences in the town, and recently when the local Somerfield became a Co-op, its car park's walls were rebuilt as flood defenses with a ramp to access the car park and a watertight pedestrian gate that can be closed when flooding is imminent.

Five sites were subsequently sold on to BP, while Morrisons sold the rest of its sites to Somerfield and Tesco, which both maintain a presence in this market sector.

* In 1998, Dairy Farm sold out its 49 % interest in Nestlé Dairy Farm, set up in 1992 to develop dairy products factories throughout China, to Nestlé ; on the merger of Kwik Save with Somerfield, Dairy Farm sold its 11 % holding for US $ 290 million.

In the following year, a new chief executive, Bob Willett, was appointed and a decision was taken to rebrand the company's operations as Somerfield after a successful pilot scheme in 1990 with a new store and the first Somerfield store in the country being built in Burnham on Sea, Somerset, and the company then built its success upon the new brand alongside the existing Gateway and Food Giant chains.

Instead, the larger Kwik Save stores were converted, some were sold or closed and the chain became a trading division of Somerfield Stores Ltd, sharing its supply chain and back office systems with Somerfield.

After completing its investigation, the Commission instructed Somerfield to sell twelve stores.

In September 2005, Somerfield announced its intention to appeal against the decision, a process delayed by a takeover bid for the chain.

In 2005, Somerfield closed 22 of its 51 Scottish Kwik Save stores and re-branded the remainder under its own name, thus removing the Kwik Save brand from the marketplace north of the border.

Somerfield re-branded the 102 Kwik Save sites it had retained under its own name and a further 77 stores were sold to other retailers, thought to include Netto and Aldi, leaving the company to focus solely on the Somerfield brand.

Having bought 140 Texaco petrol stations in 2007, Somerfield tripled the size of some of their shops, using a similar format to its convenience stores.

Somerfield re-branded the 102 Kwik Save sites it retained under its own name and a further 77 stores were sold to other retailers, including 19 to Netto.

In an effort to modernise the Kwik Save brand when under Somerfield ownership, the company undertook a programme to renovate its stores which included new staff uniforms ( a black and white chequered shirt which replaced the red t-shirts ), new " ASDA-style " shelves to replace the wooden warehouse racking ( referred to as " boards and beams "), new floors, checkouts, colour schemes and lighting.

Maxwell's Czech origin, combined with his political opinions, provoked a hostile response to his bid from the Carrs and from the editor of the News of the World, Stafford Somerfield, who declared that the paper was — and should remain — as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

The first is a small Morrisons which was converted from a Somerfield store under competition rules when the Co-op bought Somerfield.

In 2000, Waitrose purchased 11 stores from rival Somerfield.

One site in Melksham, Wiltshire was bought from Somerfield and opened on 18 March 2010.

Questions remained about whether, at a time of intense competition both from discounters and from the bigger chains, Somerfield could generate adequate growth in sales and profits.

The initial plan was to convert most of the Kwik Save stores to the Somerfield fascia, but the group continued to suffer from a disparate store portfolio, the result of numerous ill digested acquisitions by Kwik Save prior to the Somerfield takeover.

It was clear that more than a hundred Somerfield and Kwik-Save stores were within a mile of each of each other and directly competing: also customers were switching from high street to out of town shopping.

In October 2004, Somerfield acquired 114 Safeway Compact stores from Morrisons, which were subsequently re branded under the Somerfield name.

As a result, it sped up the conversion of stores from Kwik Save to Somerfield.

On 16 July 2008, it was announced that Somerfield would be acquired by the Co-operative Group for £ 1. 57 billion, subject to approval from the Office of Fair Trading.

Also the fifth largest private company in the UK, Somerfield had a 3. 8 % share of the UK grocery market in 2007, down from 4. 5 % in 2006.

A further eight stores were bought in 2009 from the Co-op ( who had acquired them on taking over the Somerfield group but were instructed to dispose of them by the Office of Fair Trading ).

It was announced in October 2006 that a £ 30m refinancing package from unnamed investors was put in place, part of which was used to finance the purchase of a further 45 more stores from Somerfield.

Sales figures from renovated stores suggested that the public did respond positively to the new look, although the profitability of these stores still does not meet that of un-refurbished Somerfield fascia stores.

Its construction also stimulated the construction of intersecting roads, such as the Brandonville pike, starting from Somerfield, Pennsylvania, passing via Kingwood, and connecting with the Northwestern at a point which became Fellowsville by 1848.

Sydenham is also home to a Co-operative, originally Safeway, more recently Somerfield supermarket on Sydenham Road.

Somerfield was the product of opportunistic acquisitions, driven more by financial engineering than by any conception of where the company should be positioned.

Kwik Save was seen for many years as the poor relation of Somerfield, consisting only of stores which were considered unsuitable for conversion to the more upmarket fascia, resulting in a further dilution of brand strength.

In 2009 a Waitrose opened in the town centre replacing the previous Somerfield supermarket.

However, an expansion of the Somerfield ( Now Co-operative ) store in the town centre was completed in September 2007 and a Tesco Express store opened in the Lansdowne Park district in December that year, replacing the former One Stop outlet.

Tesco acquired the Safeway store, Wilkinson took over the former Somerfield store and the former Co-op superstore was subdivided into a number of units which provided the town with a new main post office, Morrisons supermarket and Store Twenty One clothing store.

The large Somerfield and Co-op town centre stores have closed due to those companies merging, however the Co-op has a small store in the Wargrave area of the town.

The Kwik Save store was renamed Somerfield following a takeover in 2007, and was finally demolished in 2008 when surrounding land bought by supermarket giant Tesco.

The store briefly became a Somerfield store until late 2007.

The Somerfield store has been bought by Tesco and was relaunched as a Tesco store in the autumn of 2009.

A Sainsburys sits on the site of an old petrol station ( above it is an Italian Restaurant called Frattelli's ), opposite the Diamond Inn, and Waitrose is a little further along the road on the site of an old Somerfield store.

The town has several supermarkets including Somerfield and Filco, and a town library.

In October 2006, it was revealed that 40 Somerfield stores, including many retained Kwik Save branches, had been sold.

Graph Showing Market Share of Somerfield, including that of Kwik-Save

The main supermarket chains were Somerfield and Co-op and there are numerous specialist shops including two dispensing pharmacies.