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Nash Finch Launches Organics Brand

Nash Finch has launched a new premium natural and organics brand named after the company’s founding brothers.

MINNEAPOLIS — Nash Finch here has launched a new premium natural and organics brand named after the company’s founding brothers.

Products under the Nash Brothers Trading Company label are in their initial phase of distribution “and we’re excited with the results,” Alec Covington, the wholesaler’s president and chief executive officer, said Tuesday.

A Web site, nashbrotherstrading.com, describes the products as “inspired by simpler times,” and brothers Fred, Edgar and Willis Nash, who founded the company as a Minnesota retail store in 1885. Featured products include granola, jellies and preserves, oatmeal, peanut butter, steamed vegetables and waffles. Speaking at a conference call discussing second-quarter results, Covington said Nash Finch would “place a lot of emphasis on expanding the brand” over the coming months.

In financial results for the second quarter, which ended June 20, net earnings improved 1.1% to $9.5 million on sales of $1.2 billion. Sales improved 18.8% mainly as the result of the acquisition of three military distribution centers and the shift of the Easter holiday to the second quarter; excluding those events, sales increased by 1.9%, the company said.

Covington added that the company was expanding an “everyday value” pricing program that began for customers of its Lima, Ohio, division to retailers served by the company’s other three Great Lakes facilities in Cincinnati, Bridgeport, Mich., and Westville, Ind.

Nash Finch is also lowering its planned capital spending for the year, with estimates falling to a range of $25 million to $30 million from earlier estimates of $50 million. This, officials said, is a result of having delayed some capital projects when it first cut expenditures “and we simply won’t be able to get all the money spent during the year.”

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