Choice compared the country of origin of 360 products across 90 popular grocery lines, including cereals, biscuits, snacks, tinned goods and frozen packaged food, matching supermarket home-brand products against their market leader equivalents.
Of the products surveyed, 55% of Coles’ home-brand products and 38% of Woolworths’ home-brand products were locally made or grown, compared with 92% per cent for market leader grocery items.
“While it’s clear that Coles and Woolworths support Australian produced products in the fresh food and bakery sections of their stores, it’s a different story when you walk along the aisles,” says Choice spokesperson, Ingrid Just.
Australian primary producers have told Choice that they are not being given the opportunity to supply Coles and Woolworths with produce for tinned and packaged groceries.
“Coles and Woolies claim their buyers only look to overseas markets when local suppliers are unable to meet customers’ needs,” says Ms Just.
“However, one farmer told us that that 70,000 tonnes of vegetables including onions, potatoes and carrots will go to waste in Tasmania alone this year. We have also been told that tenders to supply vegetables for private label products are not being made public, or are often by invitation only,” says Ms Just.
Choice’s review of the country of origin of packaged, tinned and frozen items found 13 of the 14 Woolworths home-brand frozen vegetable products were sourced internationally. Additionally, 19 of Woolworth’s 21 private label tinned fruit and vegetable products came from overseas.
This year Coles have moved towards including more Australian produce across its frozen goods, however the Choice review found nine of the supermarket’s 13 tinned home-brand fruit and vegetable products came from overseas.
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