Major supermarkets commit to unit pricing roll-out

The draft unit pricing code was finally launched this week, with major retailers committing to completion of the roll-out by the end of this year.

“Our members including Coles, Woolworths and Franklins have taken the initiative and all plan to have completed a full roll-out of unit pricing before the year’s end,” said Margy Osmond of the Australian National Retailers Association (ANRA). 

“We’ve always maintained our preference is for a flexible, cost-effective and nationally consistent scheme and the draft code reflects this.”

Unit pricing is the display of the price of a good per unit of measure and the code will cover advertising, as well as online food sales. 

“This is a comprehensive scheme which covers all supermarkets which are over 1000 square metres in size,” said Osmond.

“This is a much better approach than a prescriptive state scheme which would be costly and complicated, with consumers likely to pick up the tab.”