Supermarket News Column: Taking stock

SEPTEMBER 2024 – Supermarket News

We are at that time of year when the NZFGC is gearing up for our annual conference, taking place 11 to 13 November at the impressive Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre. Those of you who have attended conference previously know it’s an excellent opportunity to come together to network and gain valuable industry insights. ‘Shared Horizons’ remains our conference theme, and to kick off the conference we will be launching the second season of our industry docuseries of the same name, showcasing the innovative stories from our diverse and dynamic sector. We’re excited to launch the series this year with an evening event at the heart of our country’s most famous democratic institution, the Beehive.

This year’s conference comes at what is a critical juncture for food, beverage, and grocery businesses. It’s apt that Conference 2024 takes place in the capital where the politicians and public sector officials responsible for the regulatory and legislative impacts themselves dwell. It’s a good time to take stock of what’s been an onslaught of significant regulatory activity: new legislation with a new commissioner, a Grocery Code with a grace period, GSAs issued, an early review of the Grocery Code, the Commerce Commission’s first Annual Grocery Report, and, just announced, an inquiry into the Wholesale Regime.

While the recent Grocery Report conclusions are disappointing, we knew the reform would take time to affect what is an incredibly complex market. When the Code was launched last year, this introduced regulation of trading between suppliers and the three Regulated Grocery Retailers. The broader industry largely welcomed the reforms agreeing it was time for Aotearoa New Zealand to catch up with other parts of the world where such reforms were in place. The industry expected and arguably deserved clarity and confidence by way of fit for purpose rules of engagement and a referee to hold us all to account to deliver the best to consumers.

Unfortunately, what has unfolded over the last year has been confusing, time consuming and costly. We’ve seen two iterations of the standard Grocery Supply Agreements issued by RGRs, and suppliers still ask frequently what is the status of the current versions in market? Should we sign them? What happens if we don’t sign them? What happens if we sign a version that is replaced once the Code Review is complete? How do we safely raise questions to get clarity on what the current Code permits and what’s no longer acceptable? These are all questions we’ve put to the Commissioner and his team in the various webinars and meetings we’ve had in the past months.

There’s no doubt that the role of NZFGC during this time is as important as ever. We need to continue to work assiduously to gain the supplier protections intended by the grocery reforms. This is advocacy and it takes many forms – from keeping members and the wider supplier network up to date, providing training, guidance and support, listening carefully to the variety of experiences and views and reflecting these as an accurate list of concerns to be discussed with officials and politicians, acting as a conduit with real time and real world supplier experiences or what policy boffins quite rightly call ‘evidence based submissions’.

We want to be constructively working together for better industry outcomes, fair and transparent trading relationships for the benefit of consumers and crucially enabling an industry where our members have confidence to invest and innovate.

That’s not quite where we’re at right now, so we will be strongly advocating for this and for better outcomes in the Code review that’s underway. In the meantime, it’s important we continue to make progress on the other areas – sustainability, supply chain, Health Star Rating, and compliant labelling to name a few.

The work continues. NZFGC is here for the long haul to make sure we serve suppliers well and we’re looking forward to November and coming together at conference to keep making progress on all these topics and opportunities.