The 54-year-old Mac’s convenience store brand is being retired by owner Alimentation Couche-Tard, which is adopting the Circle K banner for most of North America, Europe and Asia.
The company will keep its Couche-Tard banner in Quebec, where the company has its head office in Laval.
It will begin rolling out its Circle K brand to other parts of Canada in May 2017, following rollouts in the United States and Europe that begin next year.
The change will see the disappearance of Scandinavia’s Statoil store brand acquired in 2012 and The Pantry’s Kangaroo Express, bought last year.
Circle K is already Couche-Tard’s most widely used store banner, primarily in the United States plus 12 other countries.
The brand will be used on licensed stores across Asia that is part of Couche-Tard’s future growth plans.
“Today we are setting out to make it easy for existing and new customers in more countries than ever before to prefer Circle K as their destination for convenience and fuel,” CEO Brian Hannasch said.
Couche-Tard acquired Mac’s in Quebec in 1993 and five years later bought the remaining 980 Mac’s, Mike’s Mart and Beckers brands operating in Ontario and Western Canada from Silcorp.
Mac’s Milk was founded in 1961 by Ontario businessmen Ken and Carl McGowen. The name changed to Mac’s Convenience Stores in 1975, a few years after being taken over completely by Silverwood Dairies.
The announcement was made ahead of Couche-Tard’s annual meeting.
Shareholders are being asked to approve a plan to extend the voting advantage of the company’s four founders.
They would retain multiple voting shares as long as one sits on the company’s board. The current rules say the control ends when the last of the four turns 65 or dies. Jacques D’Amours is 58, while Alain Bouchard, Richard Fortin and Real Plourde are at least 65.
Executive chairman Bouchard said the four would like to continue playing a strategic role in growing the company.
Couche-Tard’s shares have surged over the years, making the retail chain the 15th largest Canadian company by market capitalization at $35.3 billion.
