The tabling in Parliament of the Food and Grocery Industry Code of Conduct is a major step towards levelling the playing field for food and grocery suppliers according to the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC).
The Code will now be tabled in Parliament as a regulation under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, which the AFGC said was integral to achieving a meaningful and enforceable Code.
“We congratulate the Government for progressing the Code as an industry-led solution to problems impacting on suppliers and consumers,” said AFGC CEO, Gary Dawson.
The Food and Grocery Code seeks to establish a clear set of principles relating to key aspects of trading relationships between retailers and suppliers and includes:
- tough restrictions on retrospective and unilateral variations to grocery supply agreements;
- greater transparency on the basis of shelf allocation for branded and private label products;
- recognition of the importance of intellectual property rights and confidentiality in driving innovation and investment in new products; and
- low cost and fast track dispute resolution mechanism.
“The Code will now be tabled in Parliament as a regulation under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to give it real teeth,” said Dawson.
“It provides a real opportunity to drive changes in behaviour and be a real circuit breaker in retailer-supplier relations by entrenching new standards of behaviour including at buyer level.”
The National Farmers’ Federation said though it supported a mandatory, binding code, this voluntary prescribed Code was a constructive step towards addressing the issues of concern to the farm sector.
“The proof of this pudding will be in the eating. We will be monitoring how the initiative will work in practice,” the CEO of the NFF, Simon Talbot, said.
Though the Code was developed initially through negotiations with Coles and Woolworths, and Aldi Australia also today announced that it will be signing up to the Code as a party.
“The provisions of the Code reflect Aldi’s current practice with suppliers: forging long term, stable, sustainable relationships and working closely in partnership to provide Australian shoppers with high quality products at permanently low prices,” an Aldi spokesperson said.
“For this reason, Aldi is happy to sign up to the Code and support the efforts of the Government and the industry overall in promoting high standards of business conduct.”
