Grocery price freeze widens

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32564, 25 March 1971, Page 1

Grocery price freeze widens

A second firm announced in Christchurch yesterday that it would freeze the price of grocery food items for two months. At the same time spokesmen for two major grocery groups in Canterbury and the West Coast, said that their groups would keep the prices as low as anyone without a freeze.

Competition was so keen that no grocery would raise prices unnecessarily.

The retail manager of the New Zealand Farmers’ Cooperative Association of Canterbury, Ltd (Mr H. B. Bull) said yesterday that his firm would have a food pricefreeze in its nine retail food outlets in Canterbury and Marlborough. The freeze would take place immediately and last for two months. ’lt would affect more than 70 per cent of grocery items. Exceptions would be the items held under price control, and any items subject to purchase by auction—such as fresh fruit and vegetables. The firm’s pattern of "specials” and promotions would continue.

On Tuesday an Auckland chain of supermarkets announced that it would impose a freeze, and Wholesale Groceries (Christchurch), Ltd, said that a similar freeze would take place from Monday. “It is not a question of freezing prices. We have always been competitive and We will continue to be competitive,” said Mr R. W. Thomas, general manager of Foodstuffs (Christchurch), Ltd, the co-operative company owned by a group of 315 independent grocers (Four Square) yesterday. “Publicity gimmick”

Mr M. S. Hunter, manager of the Good Housekeeping Bureau (South Island), Ltd, said the freeze idea was just a publicity gimmick. Grocers

had no option but to freeze prices.

Manufacturers had to make applications to justify price increases and now that the backlog had been cleared by the Government as a result of its introduction of the price justification scheme, any major price rises were unlikely,.

Mr Hunter’s organisation controls 250 shops in Canterbury and Westland. All the grocers in his group would observe all the legal and moral obligations in relation to prices, he said. The local manager of the Self-Help Co-operative. Ltd (Mr W. Anderson), with 20 shops in Canterbury, said that the trade had already had the increases, and was not aware of any further ones—nor expecting any. “The price freeze announcements are much ado about nothing,” he said. Nelson, Taranaki

A Nelson city grocer applied a three-month price freeze to goods in his shop from today, according to a Press Association message. And a Taranaki firm with three supermarkets in New Plymouth and one at Waitara announced a price freeze on 80 per cent of grocery lines from April 1.