Dean Waddell: Foodstuffs North Island Chair on National's plan to split up supermarkets
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What is the proposed split of Foodstuffs and why is it being considered?
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So not a great day to be a supermarket uh in this country as National and Labour join New Zealand First and the Greens and a broad beatdown of the grocery business. As far as the Nats go, potential break up of foodstuffs they would be split in two, pack and save would separate from New World and Foursquare. Dean Waddell is the chair of Foodstuffs North Island and he's with us. Good morning. Yeah, good morning, Mike. Do you feel under siege?
Absolutely. Yeah, the news yesterday was uh pretty hard hitting for our uh for our sector for sure and sp specifically foodstuffs.
When you look at the number of parties now, you've got I'm assuming Labour will get there, but certainly National, New Zealand first and the Greens. Is this over for you guys? Uh do you put up the white flag or is there a fight to be had?
Oh, there's absolutely a uh a fight to be had. You know, our history is um full of um, you know, independent owners uh coming together to create economies of scale, to be competitive for customers. So we've got you know, you know our history, we've got more than a hundred years of that and potentially you know, unwinding our business makes us uh less competitive. So we you know, it it potentially undermines us or will undermine the future of our business, so we ha we have to fight this. You've been on to the lawyers? No, no, no, look it's definitely not. No, this is about New Zealand consumers and getting the best value to them.
Is it legal? I mean you must have asked that question. Can a government come in and upend uh a market?
Look, uh Mike, we're we're retailers. You you we're you know, we we turn up every day to trade our grocery stores. It's not where we play the game. You know, we play out with our customers daily, you know, offering the best value, the best service we can. So We say we'll we know we've been on that path for a hundred years, we'll stay on that path, um, exceeding customers' expectations and hopefully um we will get support from
New Zealand through this piece. Okay, so you got a couple of things here. What worries you more, the national party approach with the Comcom study, or the Labour Party approach, which appears at this point anyway to be about price gouging?
Definitely like the the market is heavily regulated now. So, you know, New Zealand has a full oversight of our industry. We've been regulated for five years. We're one of the most regulated um industries in the world. So, you know, anything that applies more I don't think there's anything more people need to understand or or will need to understand about our our business. Um Yeah, so obviously that divestment is, you know, making us into a smaller co op, separating our member stores into smaller businesses is, you know, creates an a a lot more inefficient business which drives higher costs of doing business, which ultimately gets um, you know, passed
on to con to to the consumer potentially. If what you say is true, would the Commerce Commission come to that?
How does Foodstuffs’ chair describe the potential impact on competition and prices?
Decision by themselves. I mean, they're the same people who said you're making a million dollars profit a day in excess of what you need to.
Look, yeah. The million dollars a day and all the reporting Mike is a is based on assumptions and and theory, you know. So it's like any in any analysis they're using, um you know, th they have to guess a lot of the the guess the future and guess what it might look like. So, um yeah, look uh Th there's a lot of uh debate around the reports and and even the million dollars a day was based on an assumption that's you know, a group of people thought our profitability should be and that that is debatable as well.
And as far as Labor's concern, when they say there is a recipe, there is a prescription for price gouging, do you believe that's true or not?
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Chapters
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