Jul 16 2008
More Co-operative Retail
The Co-operative Group has announced today that it’s agreed to buy Somerfield for just short of £1.6 billion, a long way below the £2 to 2.5 billion Somerfield’s owners expected when they put it up for sale in January.
The co-op is different from other retailers. It’s owned by its customers (the 2.5 million who have elected to become members) and has a long commitment to quality, healthy food and to the environment and animal welfare. This is a momentous development in British retail.
The Big Four becomes The Big Five?
The take-over would give the Co-op an 8% share of the grocery retail market, catapulting it into the league of the “Big Four” retailers - Tesco (with 31% of the market), ASDA (16.8%), Sainsbury’s (15.9%) and Morrisons (11.4%). Waitrose would be a distant sixth with 3.9%.
With a focus on smaller convenience, community and rural stores, the Co-op already has more outlets than any other retailer. Somerfield’s 880 stores would give the Co-op over 3,000 in total, even after an inevitable sell-off of 200 or so for local competition reasons.
Providing quality food
From the earliest days of the Rochdale Pioneers, the co-operative movement has been committed to providing its members with pure, unadulterated food.
In the 19th century, adulteration of food with cheaper bulk substances was widespread. Alum and chalk were often added to flour, while loaves were bulked out with pipe clay and sawdust. Other adulterants were intended to improve flavour cheaply but were often toxic, such as the bitter mixtures containing strychnine added to beer.
Working in the interests of consumers, rather than purely in pursuit of profit, the early co-operative movement sold food its customers could trust and led the way for reforms in food law.
Pioneering ethical trade and animal welfare
More recently, the Co-op has led further improvements in the standards of food and drink, with a strong and clear ethical policy.
In 1995, the Co-op started to label eggs from battery chickens as “Intensively produced”, despite such honest labelling being strictly illegal. The law was changed, all eggs are now more transparently labelled and the move towards wider use of free range eggs continues. (Hellman’s are currently running and advertising campaign to promote their recent move to free range eggs.)
The Co-op has also been ahead of the pack on ethical trade, switching all its own-brand block chocolate, then its coffee and now tea, to Fairtrade. Besides the widest Fairtrade range of any retailer, the Co-op’s Sound Sourcing Code of Conduct supports reasonable working conditions, living wages, no child labour and trades union membership.
Led by its members
Of course, the Co-op is not a perfect retailer and has plenty of room for further improvements in the quality and sustainability of its food. Most importantly, though, the Co-op is owned and led by its members. The acquisition of Somerfield will widen the opportunity to have real ownership of the food we eat.
