Kemenys sales and profits down in tough liquor market

One of Australia’s largest independent liquor retailers, Kemenys, has suffered a drop in sales and profits in its latest financial year and faces an even tougher time this year as it tries to counter the full impact of a Dan Murphy’s superstore owned by Woolworths that opened nearby in a prime eastern Sydney site in mid-2014.

Kemenys, which runs a large retail store in the beachside Sydney suburb of Bondi and has more than 100,000 mail-order and online customers it services from a separate warehouse, is owned by the Kemeny family. The business has been operating since 1960.

It has remained independent in a fiercely competitive liquor retailing market where Woolworths and Coles have been increasingly dominant, even though there was a formal process in 2005 when investment bank Grant Samuel tested the appetite of potential buyers of the business.