Coles brand product quality deterioration, page-163

There is literally nothing in the Four Corners "report". A Report would be investigative, it would look at subject matter from all sides.
All it did was have an inconsistent rant with an employee with the smallest union in retail, the RAFFWU. A jaded ex-employee of Metcash / Woolworths / Coles who worked retail for 30 years and now decided to run some optometry business. And some anonymous bloke who may or may not be telling the truth.

As I've said before - there is room for improvement and a lot of that will be in the supplier negotiations / contracts, as well as a reduction in overall waste that happens leading to increased costs to both suppliers and supermarkets (and subsequently higher consumer prices). But nothing else will be found.

The farmer's story also completely left out all the facts, such as the past 3 growing seasons of Cherries have been some of the WORST in Australia due to weather crippling crops. So of course he's going to be having a bad time.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/23/australia-cherry-season-harvest-worst-50-years-prices-why


Also you can read through the senate inquiry now. Be warned - there is nothing surprising in these submissions and its very bland and boring and proves that this inquiry is going to be a waste of money.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Supermarket_Prices/SupermarketPrices/Submissions


Victorian Farmers Federation disagrees with the price gouging notion.

Aus Veg are saying the supermarkets are price matching to REDUCE prices - also the complete opposite to price gouging.



The Federal Governments own Treasury department sumitted




This entire senate inquiry is going to find almost nothing and will only be a waste of our tax payer money.

Oh and according to the Federal Treasury, only 1 in 5 suppliers feel that 'sometimes they are treated unfairly'



The ACCC made a submission there too.. only 1 incident in 2014 where Coles was found to be treating suppliers unfairly and they paid out 12 million back to suppliers. And of all the acquisitions, the ACCC only opposed 4 in 10 years due to competition concerns.

People calling for boycotts and other idiotic notions of supermarkets are the same people that made these pathetic submissions


Here's a point of fact - do you want to know what some of the largest costs are to manufacturers of chilled / frozen / refridgerated goods are?
Electricity and transportation. Keeping an entire warehouse at ~2 degrees celsius is extremely expensive.
So while CPI may have 'only' been ~8% or so, the cost of electricity increased over 100%




Coal price index:

Electricity prices are now back on the way down, so theoretically we should also start to see a reduction in chilled / frozen food costs. However I still haven't seen Alinta, Energex, AGL, Origin, etc. offering lower energy prices? Have you? So where is the real price gouging going on?

The truth is, you can't hire 1% of the working population that works with 8,000 different suppliers around the country and NO ONE is talking about any kind of illegal business practices going on except 1 anonymous guy who refused to share his name, his company, or even show his face.