“Our history is full of independent owners coming together to create economies of scale to be competitive for customers,” he said.
“Potentially unwinding our business makes us less competitive.”
He denied that Foodstuffs had consulted lawyers, saying the issue was “about New Zealand consumers and getting the best value to them”.
Asked if a Government could legally “upend a market”, Waddell said: “We’re retailers. We turn up every day to trade our grocery stores. It’s not where we play the game.”
Waddell said the market was heavily regulated and New Zealand already had “full oversight” of the industry.
He also downplayed a 2022 Commerce Commission report which said the supermarket industry made $1 million in excess profits every day, saying it was based on “assumptions and theory”.
Eric Rush – who owns the Whangārei New World – told Ryan Bridge Today the plan was “really quite shocking” and was surprised to see it coming from National.
He also questioned the rationale for leaving the Australian-owned Woolworths alone.
“They’re talking like the [Foodstuffs] co-op’s this big corporate giant – it’s not. It’s me and my wife. It’s Todd and Lillian who own Pak’nSave down the road. It’s Sione and Alice who own Ōtāhuhu Four Square.”
Rush said his store already competed aggressively with the local Pak’nSave as well as with the city’s three Woolworths.
“There’s only a certain amount of dollars in Whangārei and I’d rather have that dollar in my bank account than Todd’s.”
Rush said the regions would suffer most from a split as rural stores would pay more for the same products.
For every dollar that came through his tills, “I get to keep 3.8 cents if I do a good job,” Rush said.
“We work long and hard hours and we make a decent living. There’s a lot of risk involved, there’s a lot of heartache.”
He was more than happy to see increased competition, “but there’s a reason Aldi’s not here. There a reason that Walmart’s not here. The 3.8c is probably the reason they’re not here. We just haven’t got the population and scale.”
National has said its policy would require sign-off from the Commerce Commission after a six-month assessment, which would happen after the election.
A cost-benefit analysis had looked at splitting up both Woolworths and Foodstuffs but found the Foodstuffs-only split was the preferred option, Willis said.
New Zealand First claimed that National was stealing its policies, while Act leader David Seymour criticised the plan as “attacking business”. However, he didn’t explicitly rule out signing up to the policy in a future coalition agreement.
BusinessNZ yesterday compared the plan to Labour’s oil and gas ban and NZ First’s plan to split up the gentailers, saying it would deter foreign investors and send a “chilling signal” that the Government could break up businesses.