Fresh & Easy Equipment on Auction Block

PHOENIX — Hundreds of items of never-used supermarket store equipment from Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores are now on the auction block.

Surplus Asset Management (SAM), an auction company here, has listed items including refrigeration equipment, shelving, safes, tables, sinks, display units, walk-in coolers and checkstands which will be auctioned for sale at SAM’s facilities in Southern California. Photographs of some items on the auctioneer’s website bear Fresh & Easy logos. The auction website described the lot as “millions of dollars in new equipment,” and that it expected to receive “truckloads” of additional items through the end of the month.

A Fresh & Easy spokesman told SN Monday, however, that the auction represented “a small amount of excess unused equipment,” from the company and was “not any indication of any change in status of Fresh & Easy.”

Read more: Fresh & Easy Seeks to Reassure Customers

The retailer, a division of Cheshunt, England-based Tesco, said in December that it was conducting a strategic review that could result in a sale. In addition to 200 operating stores, Fresh & Easy had plans to build and/or complete development at at least 20 additional sites at the time it announced the review.

Fresh & Easy said it intends to reveal the results of that review in April.