Woolworths New Zealand and the National Retail Group have announced a wholesale agreement. This will see Woolworths NZ provide groceries to National Retail Group’s KwikMart membership group.
KwikMart is a new dairy and convenience-oriented retail membership group established by the National Retail Group, which unites dairy and convenience retailers with scale and ranging. It enables its members to reorientate what they sell as well as assisting with their operating models, customer experience offerings and a wider access to goods.
Woolworths NZ set up its wholesale business, New Zealand Grocery Wholesalers, in 2022. Following this agreement with National Retail Group, NZ Grocery Wholesalers now has 15 wholesale customers and is distributing groceries to 25 customer sites.
NZ Grocery Wholesalers General Manager Steve Sexton says that the new deal is reflective of the company’s growing wholesale business.
“We’ve built the NZ Grocery Wholesalers business from scratch over the past 12 months, and we’re thrilled by how quickly it’s become established in a relatively complex market. We recently implemented a significant IT enhancement that improves our onboarding of new customers and sites like the National Retail Group,” he says.
“It’s fantastic to have National Retail Group on board as part of our ongoing work to provide better options for Kiwi shoppers across the board. We’ve already started making deliveries to their site and look forward to working with the KwikMart members around Aotearoa to help ensure a great range of supply for their customers.”
National Retail Group Executive Director Sandeep Aggarwal says NZ needs a “thriving dairy and convenience sector that moves beyond selling what we’ve always sold”.
“KwikMart was formed when the restrictions on sales of smoked tobacco was signalled. We have to adapt to survive,” he says.
“In Woolworths NZ, we have an excellent proactive partner that gives franchise members truly competitive offerings and range of groceries. This can be passed onto our customers, so they see us as part of their weekly shop. This ensures a future for the dairy with us going back to grocery and other goods to create a future.”
NZ Grocery Wholesalers operates separately from Countdown, SuperValue and FreshChoice, with a different buying team having discussions with suppliers around products, supply and potential wholesale volumes.
“We have more work underway to continue improving our IT infrastructure and supply chain capabilities, and we’re focused on building our capacity to satisfy the demand we’re seeing for better wholesale access,” says Mr Sexton.
