More competition, not less cooperation

AUCKLAND, 18 september 2026 – cooperative business nz

Cooperative Business New Zealand says proposals to structurally separate grocery cooperatives need to properly account for the benefits created by cooperative scale, while greater attention should be given to enabling new forms of competition to emerge.

CBNZ Chief Executive Saya Wahrlich says the organisation supports stronger grocery competition and better outcomes for consumers, but the key question is whether any proposed intervention will lead to lower prices, better choice and improved service for New Zealand households.

“Competition should ultimately be measured by the outcomes it delivers for consumers. Simply increasing the number of grocery businesses does not necessarily create stronger competition or lower prices.

“Cooperation allows hundreds of locally owned businesses to pool purchasing power, distribution, technology, infrastructure and investment so they can compete at a scale they could not achieve individually.

“Any assessment of separation needs to test whether two networks, each with fewer stores and less purchasing volume, could maintain the efficiencies and geographic reach currently supported by the combined cooperative network, and ultimately deliver better outcomes for consumers across New Zealand.”

CBNZ also believes compulsory separation or restructuring of a lawful New Zealand-owned business should face a high evidential threshold.

“Businesses invest with the reasonable expectation that lawful ownership structures and regulatory settings will be stable and predictable. Intervention of this scale needs to demonstrate compelling long-term public benefit and consider the implications for property rights, regulatory certainty, productivity, business confidence and investment.

“Any proposal should be assessed not on whether it changes ownership structures, but on whether it will genuinely leave consumers better off, by how much, over what timeframe, and at what cost and risk.”

Wahrlich says the debate presents an opportunity to think more creatively about where additional competition could come from.

“New Zealand’s size, geography and distribution economics make establishing another large national competitor challenging. The recent bid to attract an international competitor stalled after global players opted not to take part.

“We should be putting at least as much energy into creating new competitors as we are into restructuring existing ones. The real question is how New Zealand can encourage more locally owned businesses, innovative retail models and new sources of supply to enter and grow.”

Consumer and community-owned grocery cooperatives, for example, are not an experiment. They operate successfully at scale across many developed economies. Switzerland’s two largest retail groups, Migros and Coop, are consumer-owned cooperatives, while Japan’s consumer cooperative movement serves around 31 million members. These examples demonstrate that cooperative ownership can coexist with strong competition and consumer choice.

Other opportunities could include community grocery cooperatives, regional buying groups, producer-to-consumer models and digital cooperative marketplaces.

“Rather than expecting more national supply chains to operate more competitively with greater replication and less volume flowing through each, we should also be asking how existing wholesale and distribution infrastructure could enable different forms of competition to develop.

“Cooperatives have been part of New Zealand’s response to distance, scarcity and limited scale for generations. Cooperation and competition are not opposites. In a country the size of New Zealand, cooperation is often the mechanism that allows locally owned businesses to compete, invest and grow.

“The goal should be more competition for consumers, not simply less cooperation between businesses.”

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