We aspire to be one of the most customer driven retailers in the world. This drives everything we do, whether in-store, through our supply chain, or at our support centres.
Our 300+ stores collectively stock more than 50,000 products, sourced from New Zealand and around the world. We’re constantly looking for new products that give our customers better value, higher quality and more choice, and offered 9,000 more products to our stores during the year.
Our biggest highlights in FY24 included our efforts to address food inflation in New Zealand, while continuing our programme of investment in our stores, systems and supply chain.
We know food price inflation has pushed up the cost of living, which is why we’ve worked so hard to keep prices down for the foods that matter most to New Zealand households.
Since mid-2022, we’ve been laser-focused on buying well, pricing sharply, and ensuring we deliver lasting value at the checkout. It’s been the toughest fight against inflation many of us have worked through, but indications (at the time of writing) are that it’s back under control.
This year, Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island marked two years of keeping the rate of food price rises across our stores lower than Stats NZ’s official food inflation figure for 22 out of 24 months – using the same methodology and ‘basket’ categories, including 10 months of FY24.
As at the end of FY24, our North Island co-op had 320 physical grocery stores, made up of 163 Four Squares, 103 New Worlds, 46 PAK’nSAVEs and eight Gilmours.
Every year we invest around $100 million into building new stores and renovating existing ones in local communities right across the North Island. In FY24 we opened eight new or replacement stores and completed five refurbishments – a record year that gives our customers better shopping experiences and fresh new layouts.
Those eight new stores were a $46 million PAK’nSAVE Warkworth, a new Gilmours wholesale store in Napier, and six Four Squares: two in Auckland (Onehunga, Britomart), two for Taranaki (Waverley and Fitzroy), and one each for the Bay of Plenty (Mount Maunganui) and Waikato (Te Kowhai).
Refurbishment works included a number of checkout upgrades for both New World and PAK’nSAVE stores across the country: medium refurbishments completed for New World Foxton, New World Te Rapa and New World Albany; a minor refurbishment for New World Onekawa; new refrigeration for PAK’nSAVE Mt Albert in Auckland; and a full car park remediation for PAK’nSAVE Mill Street.
Seismic upgrades were completed at another nine stores across the country, and we completed back-of-house safety and design reviews at Four Squares – all part of our ongoing programme of investment to ensure our customers and teams are as safe as possible in our stores.
In the coming year we expect to open at least six new stores, including New Worlds in Papamoa (Bay of Plenty) and Havelock North (Hawke’s Bay), a Four Square in Opunake (Taranaki), and a PAK’nSAVE in Highland Park (Auckland).
Refurbishments are currently in the pipeline for another 50 stores across the next four years – all so we can offer our customers a world-class experience, at the heart of our local communities.
A further 30 seismic upgrades will be completed by the end of 2025.
Brand new PAK’nSAVE Warkworth
| CASE STUDY: FOUR SQUARE MAHORA REOPENS ONE YEAR AFTER CYCLONE GABRIELLE |
Scott Iskowicz with partner Stephanie Tidey and son Ollie |
| Four Square Mahora Owner Operator Scott Iskowicz reopened his Hawke’s Bay store in February 2024, one year after it was devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle. The storm cut power to his store for four days, destroying stock and forcing the store to close. Scott and his partner Stephanie Tidey and son Ollie also experienced serious flooding in their home. Now back up and running for the community, Four Square Mahora is one of the first Four Squares in the Hawke’s Bay to showcase the latest ultra-modern format and design. Scott and Stephanie are now giving back to the community who put them up and helped them get through the store's shutdown by supporting the local Mahora Primary School. “We’re both just incredibly grateful,” Scott says. |
FY24 saw positive growth in our online business, with a focus on improving customer experience throughout the purchasing journey.
Online shopping is now available at 100 of our New Worlds (delivery and/or Click & Collect) and 44 PAK’nSAVE stores (Click & Collect).
We’ve expanded same day Click & Collect and Home Delivery in our New World operations and opened additional slots to provide more access to online shopping for our customers. And we’ve continued to listen and respond to store feedback to make it easier for our colleagues to provide a great experience for our customers.
We also invested in new electronic systems that help our stores do what they do in an easier and faster way, so customers can get what they need, when they need it. Improvements included the roll-out of Safe Food Pro, which aims to build consumer trust across our four major brands by enabling excellence in food safety standards, providing access to better quality information for our teams, and streamlining the process for customer complaints.
In addition, we launched the Timewise project, with 58 stores already effectively implementing StaffSync, a digital tool to handle time attendance and rostering. A deployment plan is in place to reach the target of 149 stores on board by October. This project is also actively addressing potential scheduling challenges and working on reconciling data to ensure a seamless transition. As a result, we’ll have the right number of people in the right place at the right time, ready for our customers.
Our co-op never sleeps, and behind every great local store is our robust Supply Chain, making sure we get stock on shelves for customers every day.
To deliver the scale and efficiency our customers and stores need, we have five distribution centres across Auckland and Palmerston North, and four transport depots in Whangarei, Hastings, New Plymouth, and Wellington which collectively employ more than 1,000 team members.
We also have a fleet of almost 400 trucks, driven by 38 company drivers and 415 owner-drivers. (We see higher driver numbers due to domestic vehicles being double shifted.)
In FY24, we strengthened our supply chain in the following ways:
Other highlights during the year included welcoming 30 more major supplier partners to our DCs, allowing us to better manage inventory and vastly improve availability on store shelves.
The increase in suppliers contributed to a 10% rise in cartons handled over the year and helped us reach our cost-to-serve target, which in turn helped stores keep prices down.
Overall, our distribution centre (DC) outbound service levels reached record levels, and our truck utilisation (i.e. how full our trucks were) reached an all-time high of 51.4% (across 90,000+ loads – up from 48.2% in FY23), due to a programme of intensive end-to-end planning, despite ongoing challenges with a number of regional roads. We’ve been able to keep to our transport carbon emission commitments, while still meeting our customer needs.
Another highlight for the year was achieving a record-breaking 97.5% DC-to-store service level in the week before Christmas, thanks to strong collaboration with our top 50 suppliers and a carefully managed balancing of imported stock levels. Our on-shelf availability rate is also sitting at the best we’ve ever seen.
