Following reports last week that supermarket giant Woolworths has been passing the costs of its Jamie Oliver campaign onto Australian growers, AUSVEG has written to the celebrity chef, requesting that he ask the retailer to give refunds to the farmers who have contributed to the campaign.
Late last week, AUSVEG, the peak industry body for vegetable and potato growers, released a statement urging the ACCC to investigate the behaviour of Woolworths who are allegedly seeking enormous contributions from Australia’s horticulturalists to pay for their instore Jamie Oliver campaign.
According to AUSVEG, Woolworths are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual growers around Australia to fund their new campaign in the form of a new 40c per crate charge on top of the 2.5 – 5 per cent fee growers are already required to pay Woolworths for them to market and promote their produce.
In addition, AUSVEG allege that Australian growers are being given no undertaking from Woolworths on what return they will see from the additional funds they are being asked to provide to fund the promotion.
“We have now taken the step of writing to Mr Oliver to ask that he intervenes and pleads with Woolworths to refund this money to Australian vegetable growers,” said AUSVEG public affairs manager William Churchill.
“We have no issue with Mr Oliver, but for Woolworths to ask hard working Australian growers to stump up this additional money is unreasonable, unfair and un-Australian.”
Churchill says that AUSVEG is not opposed to the campaign per se, but says that the cost should not be at the expense of Australian farmers.
“AUSVEG’s primary concern is that financially-stretched Australian vegetable growers are being unfairly pressured in to contributing to a marketing campaign for a company, which in February posted a $1.32 billion net profit.”
“Clearly this campaign could be funded from Woolworth’s own coffers, without having to further squeeze Aussie growers.”