By Randy Tucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Belgian food retailer Delhaize said Monday that it might be interested in buying stores from Florida-based Winn-Dixie, which said last week that it would sell or close 156 stores nationwide - including 21 Thriftway markets in Greater Cincinnati.

But a spokesman for Delhaize's North Carolina-based Food Lion division said his company probably wouldn't be interested in Thriftway since its stores wouldn't fit Delhaize's overall growth strategy.

"We're not currently looking to expand into any new markets,'' Food Lion spokesman Jeff Lowrance said.

Lowrance said Food Lion and its sister chains Hannaford Brothers and Harvey's are located mainly in the Carolinas and Virginia as well as in eight other Eastern Seaboard states. The company has some stores in central Kentucky but none in Ohio or Northern Kentucky.

Geoffroy d'Oultremont, a Delhaize spokesman, essentially opened the bidding for Winn-Dixie's stores when he told Reuters news service that the company "could be interested, depending on the conditions."

"We are in general interested in buying some stores that could reinforce our market position," he said. "We will have to analyze the locations, and then we will decide."

Winn-Dixie said it would try to complete its restructuring within the next 12 months. The move will affect about 2,000 Thriftway workers.

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E-mail rtucker@enquirer.com