buy nz made - before it's all gone

I had a chance to speak to a local manufacturer today who sells into both Australian and New Zealand supermarket chains. His experience of late has confirmed what many had fared about the buyout of Progressive Enterprises by Woolworths Australia - that NZ based suppliers are fucked. In an environment where the price grocery retailers pay for their goods have remained relatively static, suppliers here are now forced to match terms with Australian products or lose access to supermarket shelves. In theory, there's opportunity for NZ suppliers to gain access to Australia, but the reality is that the margins they get from NZ supermarkets is low, and a lack of cashflow for the smaller suppliers to invest in equipment to be able to ramp their output serving four million people to output serving six times that number makes quick expansion impossible. The same lack of liquidity prevents manufacturers from acquiring horizontally - meaning business that are in trouble simply disappear, rather than being bought by another NZ operation.

All the while, the Woolworth's Australia has made a very nice profit, reporting in the latest half year that
- EBIT was up by 31.5% to $A902.4 million.
- Supermarket (Oz&NZ) sales up $A2.4 billion to $A16 billion.
- NZ Supermarket sales up 4.3%
- Food inflation was 1.5-2%

The cost of doing business was also down (read: squeezing suppliers), with

80% of these cost savings were reinvested in gross margin with the balance going to increase EBIT margin.

(PDF here)

So we - the consumer - is left with little choice in what we buy, even if we are swayed by the Green's Buy NZ Made Campaign. It's starting already - you may have noticed your favorite Basics product replaced with the Oz made home brand. Little wonder we're flocking to Australia, pretty soon we'll be left without any food.

down the line

So Telecom is planning to dance with the regulators, which on the face of it is good news. But it probably wont be. This is the same Telecom that has defied regulators in the past. It's the same Telecom that misrepresents its services (are you paying less for Telecom broadband?). Don't hold your breath on this one. Yes, they have promised transparency within it's operations. And they've promised a level playing field. But Telecom can and will find ways to confuse. Price gouging on mobile-land packages are an obvious risk. We really do need a proper new business to operate Telecom's wholesale business, including wireless.

bad with the good

It's only fair, if I'm slagging someone off, to point out when things get better. It wasn't long ago in the fair suburb of Mt Eden, when Telecom's DSL service was extremely oversubscribed - leaving us serfs with seriously lacking broadband. But now, I feel like I'm actually getting bang for my buck - large downloads clocking in at over 180kbs. Sure, I'm not getting the 3mbs Telecom insists is theoretically possible and, fine, it slows down my browsing, but I'm much happier now with my download speed than I was before. If only they'd get rid of those nasty download caps.

Meanwhile, I've had a chance to have a play with Google Spreadsheets properly. They haven't, as hyped, got it all down - no charts, macros or anything Excel has in the Data menu. But it works fine enough - and considering it's still a 'labs' project, it's sure to add all the whistles and bells soon enough. They've got rid of the limited trial too, it seems - only needing a google account to sign up.