First Annual Grocery Report

While the cost of living continues to make it a tough time for Kiwi families and businesses, our absolute focus is on giving our customers more value, convenience and a fantastic shopping experience - and we’re committed to getting on with that. 

Things in the grocery industry have changed in the last couple of years, and keep evolving.  At Woolworths, like other businesses and New Zealanders, we have felt the impact of inflation in the last couple of years and our profits are at their lowest levels since FY16. In FY24, we made a loss of 0.5 cents for every dollar spent in our stores and our profit declined by 57% compared to FY23. 

We’ve been working hard to further improve competition and supplier relations, and have done everything asked of us by the Commission. We supported the introduction of unit pricing and the Grocery Supply Code. Our wholesale business, only 2 years old, already has over 40 independent retail customers, and is delivering to over 65 retail sites.

There has been a significant amount of major new regulations and initiatives in the grocery sector over the last year, like the Grocery Supply Code, unit pricing and the establishment of rules around wholesale. We’re surprised the Commission hasn’t given these a chance to bed in before looking at further change.

When looking at the grocery sector more widely, there’s a lot that affects what’s paid for groceries at the checkout and we believe that’s worth talking about. The amount suppliers charge us has a much bigger impact on the prices shoppers pay than anything else. 

For all the analysis that's been done, the role of large, multinational suppliers has never been properly taken into account - we think that to get a full picture, this needs to be looked at.

We’ll now take the time to read the report in detail and will continue to work closely with the Grocery Commissioner and his team.

Notes: 

• In the last couple of years there have been a number of positive changes at Woolworths New Zealand:
  - Electronic shelf labels are in over 110 of our stores
  - We support mandatory unit pricing and we've displayed unit prices on many of our products for a number of years 
  - We're investing in upgrading our older stores so everyone gets a great shopping experience at Woolworths
  - Our wholesale business, New Zealand Grocery Wholesalers, has over 40 customers and is delivering to over 65 retail sites. We're keen to keep growing

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