Dr Benno Blaschke: Grocery reform or procedural tweak

The Government deserves credit for wanting to make it easier for new supermarkets and other large projects to get off the ground. The Government’s broad approach is sound. There are currently too many unreasonable barriers, and more competition benefits consumers.

Last week’s amendment to the Fast-track Approvals Act, now before Parliament, intends to enable greater competition. It will also allow ministers to issue policy statements to guide decision-makers. One of these will focus on grocery competition.

David Farrar: Sensible Supermarket strategy

Nicola Willis has announced some significant changes to encourage a third supermarket chain. They are:

Bruce Cotterill: Chasing foreign supermarkets won’t lower food prices

I sometimes wonder if our politicians put themselves in the headlines without thinking things through.

This week the supermarket industry has been back in the spotlight. Our Finance Minister is making it her business to keep it there as she attempts to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.

Cam Slater: Finally, a Crack at the Grocery Duopoly - Willis’s Plan to Bring Down Prices

After years of Kiwis getting hammered at the checkout, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis has stepped up with a plan to shake up the supermarket sector. She’s promising to fast-track new supermarkets into the market, aiming to crank up competition and, fingers crossed, deliver some real relief on grocery bills. This comes hot on the heels of announcements from RNZ and Stuff, where Willis laid out her blueprint to release the stranglehold held by the big two: Woolworths and Foodstuffs.

Ele Ludemann: Govt doing what govt should

There’s a wide spread view that supermarkets here are ripping off customers.

If that’s the case, what my farmer and I saw in Australian supermarkets on recent trips suggests it’s no better on that side of the Tasman.

Prices there seemed much the same as prices here, especially when GST applied here and not there was taken into account.

Dr Eric Crampton: The obstacles in place for any new supermarket player

There are already too many reasons for international supermarket chains to decide our small set of islands far from everywhere are not worth bothering about.

Adding one more seems bad if government has prioritised retail grocery competition.

Dr Eric Crampton: Learning from letters

We can learn a lot from newspapers’ Letters to the Editor pages.

This week, I had a column in the Stuff newspapers on the Initiative’s proposed fast-track for new supermarkets.

I noted that existing district plans block new supermarkets that might compete with existing ones. So, we suggested enabling large-scale entry by a new player, overriding anticompetitive parts of district plans, and handling plan changes and consents for all sites at one go.

Chris Lynch: Commerce Commission targets supermarket dominance

The Commerce Commission has unveiled a new move to challenge the dominance of major supermarket chains and large grocery suppliers, saying the current market structure is failing New Zealand consumers and stifling competition.

In a draft report released today, the Commission outlined changes to the Grocery Supply Code and initial findings from its ongoing inquiry into the wholesale market.

Dr Eric Crampton: The only way to find out if more supermarket competition is real

There’s an old joke about economists walking past a $20 note on the sidewalk. One says to the other, “If that note were real, someone would have picked it up already.”

It could be that the $20 note was a photocopied counterfeit with advertising on the other side. You’ve probably seen those before.

But there are other potential explanations.

Dr Benno Blaschke: Fast-Track Supermarket Entry and Expansion Omnibus Bill

The government has viewed stronger retail grocery competition as a national priority. But zoning, consenting, and overseas investment approval processes make new entry far too difficult.

The New Zealand Initiative today showed how to open New Zealand’s markets to more competition. It released drafting instructions for a Fast-track Supermarket Entry and Expansion Omnibus Bill, which would rapidly approve retail grocery developments at scale and cut through complex barriers that are preventing new supermarket chains from entering the New Zealand market.

Dr Benno Blaschke: Breaking up supermarkets won’t solve competition issues

The government is impatient for change in grocery retail. Minister Willis put supermarkets on notice that they may even be broken up if they do not put forward acceptable proposals.

The Commerce Commission’s 2022 market study pointed to a different underlying problem. Structural separation is unlikely to do much good if it is not solved. If this problem is solved, other measures might not be needed.

Richard Meade: NZ and Australia face a complicated puzzle when it comes to supermarket prices...

This may be as good as it gets: NZ and Australia face a complicated puzzle when it comes to supermarket prices

With ongoing cost of living pressures, the Australian and New Zealand supermarket sectors are attracting renewed political attention on both sides of the Tasman.

Allegations of price gouging have become a political issue in the Australian federal election. At the same time, the New Zealand government has announced that “all options” are on the table to address a lack of competition in the sector – including possible breakup of the existing players.

Kerre Woodham: What's it going to take to get supermarket competition?

We're going a little bit back to the future today because the annual report card into the grocery industry came out yesterday, and we were overrun with health talk. So we'll go back to that report and look at the ramifications for the industry, for the suppliers, and for us, the consumers.

Tim Beveridge: What will it take to break the duopoly?

So, the new grocery commissioner says it's disappointing to see any potential supermarket competitor fail on the back of the news that Supie —an online retailer that had hoped to challenge the supermarket duopoly— had failed.

It leaves us with the question as to what it is going to take to break open the supermarket duopoly.

I’ll have to be honest that beyond being vaguely familiar with its name, I knew very little about Supie.

Mike Hosking: Supie's fall means a lot of questions for the market

It's always a sad, old business when a half-decent idea doesn’t quite work out.

That's how it appears with Supie, the company and the start-up designed to shake up the supermarket game.

Now, it's important to remember we don’t know why they have gone into liquidation. Even if a business fails, it may say nothing about the economic environment, it may say nothing about the specific sector it operated in, or then again it may say a lot.

Eric Crampton: NZ initiative urges stronger focus on grocery competition and entry

Wellington (Monday, 2 October 2023) - The New Zealand Initiative welcomed today’s announcement that a re-elected Labour government would ease the path for new grocers to enter the New Zealand market.

But it also warned against subsidising entry.