The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will begin monitoring supermarket pricing from 1 July, when a new excessive pricing prohibition covering Coles and Woolworths comes into force.
The prohibition applies to very large supermarket retailers with annual revenue of more than $30 billion, a threshold that currently captures only the two major chains. Guidelines published this week set out how the regulator will monitor compliance and assess whether either supermarket has priced a grocery product excessively.
There is no fixed threshold for what counts as an excessive price. Instead, the ACCC will weigh all relevant circumstances, including the cost of supplying a product to consumers and what constitutes a reasonable margin for the retailer.
ACCC acting chair, Catriona Lowe, said grocery prices remained a key concern for households, and the prohibition gave the regulator “another tool within our broader toolkit to protect consumers and promote competition.”
The regulator will focus its monitoring on a select group of products, chosen using consumer and supplier reports alongside pricing, margin and sales data obtained from the supermarkets. It has encouraged both consumers and suppliers to report concerns that a product may have been excessively priced, saying the reports will help identify products that warrant closer examination.
“We will focus our attention on products where excessive pricing is likely to cause the most harm to consumers,” Lowe said.
The ACCC will select and publish its initial focus products over the coming months and has committed to regular updates on its monitoring to strengthen transparency around supermarket pricing.
The prohibition sits alongside the existing competition and consumer laws the ACCC administers and does not replace its broader enforcement powers. Breaches of the Food and Grocery Code can attract significant penalties, with enforcement options including court action, infringement notices and court enforceable undertakings.
“If we observe non-compliance then we would consider the most appropriate enforcement tool to address any misconduct,” Lowe said.
The federal government announced the supermarkets excessive pricing prohibition on 14 December 2025, implementing it as an amendment to the Food and Grocery Code. It introduces a new purpose to the code: to promote workably competitive grocery markets and protect consumer welfare by prohibiting excessive pricing by very large retailers.
In assessing compliance, the ACCC will consider factors including whether a retailer meets the very large retailer test, the grocery product and its pricing, the retailer’s cost of supply, and whether the pricing is “significantly excessive” compared with that cost plus a reasonable margin.
