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Rosella could be just the latest casualty of tactics used by Coles and Woolworths to push our much loved iconic Australian brands off supermarket shelves.
Generic products have been around for decades providing low-income earners with a cheaper alternative to name brand items. Most of these cheaper generic versions were manufactured in Australia and in many cases, by the same company that manufactures the brand name product. Often the only difference between the branded product and the generic version was the packaging and there was only one generic version on offer.
But in more recent years, Coles and Woolworths have been pushing their own ‘private label’ brands on to consumers and it hasn’t gone unnoticed that as a consequence, many of our favourite brand name products have been disappearing from supermarket shelves.
Like me, I’m sure you have lost count of the number of times you’ve visited a supermarket only to find one or more of your favourite brands is no longer available. But with Coles and Woolworths controlling 70% of the market, what choice do most of us have but to purchase whatever is left on the shelf?
According to an investigation by consumer watchdog CHOICE, our two major supermarkets have been employing tactics such as poorer shelf positioning and copycat packaging, to push long established brands off supermarket shelves in favour of their own generic or ‘private label’ versions.
Unlike the generic substitutes of old, these ‘private label’ offerings are available in three different versions: “bargain basement staples, medium-priced fare and premium/specialist products”.
“When two brands compete for space on the shelf, and when one of those is owned by the supermarket, it’s not hard to figure out who the winner is going to be,” said CHOICE spokeswoman, Ingrid Just.
But it’s not just our iconic Aussie brands who are being squeezed out. An increasing number of generic products are being manufactured with ingredients sourced from overseas.
According to AUSVEG, the National Peak Industry Body representing Australia’s 9,000 vegetable and potato growers, a large amount of processed tomato product on Australian shelves originates from Italy, where growers enjoy a cheaper cost of labour and receive a European Union (EU) subsidy to protect their industry. Potato producers in the EU also receive similar subsidies.
“It is shocking to think of a food industry in Australia without a classic Australian brand such as Rosella, and action is desperately required to reverse this trend before all of our food is produced overseas,” said AUSVEG Spokesperson, Hugh Gurney.
“The past 18 months have seen the collapse or closure of a number of prominent vegetable growing and processing operations in Australia. If the Australian food processing sector continues to struggle, we could be facing a future where we can’t even enjoy a locally produced meat pie with tomato sauce at the footy, due to the closure of local food production operations.”
And the AUSVEG spokesperson isn’t exaggerating.
IBISWorld predicts by 2016, about one in three products on the supermarket shelves will be private label. If there is any truth to this, we can expect to see many more of our iconic brands disappearing over the next 3 years.
With established brands now competing with not one but three distinctly different generic versions for shelf space, is it any wonder that an increasing number of our food manufacturers are going under.