Coles, Woolworths to end buying limits

Coles and Woolworths will end almost all limits on buying on Tuesday as Woolworths grapples with a new COVID headache.

Coles has dropped buying restrictions brought in to head off a new round of panic buying. Picture: Mark Scott

Coles and Woolworths will remove almost all purchasing restrictions, on Tuesday after several waves of buying restrictions in recent weeks.

The only remaining restriction will be limits on toilet paper at Woolworths.

While Coles thanked customers for their patience, “we ask that customers continue to buy only what they need and observe all safety and physical distancing measures in our stores,” a spokesman said.

The removal of the purchasing limits at Coles, which applied to staples and household goods including toilet paper, will apply across all states and territories.

Woolworths said it would continue to monitor the situation closely and would not hesitate to reinstate product limits if needed.

“With demand moderating, there is more than enough stock flowing through from our distribution warehouses and into our stores to support all our customers’ grocery needs,” a spokesman said.

The Coles move comes after online orders from Woolworths were disrupted after a worker at its West Footscray customer fulfilment centre in Melbourne’s west tested positive to COVID-19 over the weekend.

As a result all deliveries out of the centre, which handles 20 per cent of Woolworths’ online orders for Melbourne, cancelled.

The development follows a worsening second-wave COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne.

The centre has been deep cleaned on Saturday and Sunday, with normal operations resuming on Monday. The worker was reportedly last at work on Wednesday before they began showing symptoms on Thursday.

Workers at the site were being tested on Monday and some have been asked to self isolate.

“We’re continuing to make contact with our CFC team members and will provide our full support to those required to self-isolate at home in line with the advice from the Health Department,” a Woolworths spokesman said.

The Footscray case follows a separate positive case recorded by a Woolworths’ staff member who worked two shifts at a store in Balmain in Sydney while infectious. The man had spent two weeks in quarantine in Victoria after returning from Bangladesh before returning to work in NSW.

Meanwhile Woolworths’ rival Aldi says the closure of the NSW-Victoria border will not greatly affect operations, with measures in place to help those who work on either side of the lockdown and food exempt from restrictions.

On Monday Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said there would be a permit system introduced for border crossings, which was confirmed by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian who said special conditions would be put in place for freight operations and other critical services.

“There will be a facility for people who live on those border communities to be able to travel to and from for the purposes or work, the purposes of the essential health services they might need,” Mr Andrews said.

“There’ll be different permit systems that support both border communities, but also there’ll be some other very significant commercial activity [such as] freight.”

TWU Victoria and Tasmania branch secretary John Berger had earlier called on the government to provide assurances that cross-border truckers would be exempt from self-isolation requirements.

He said it was important that truck stops stayed open for drivers and demanded clarity on several key points including whether or not there would be temperature checks imposed on drivers, or whether they would be provided with PPE.

“Trucking is an essential service which is vital to ensure that goods continue to be made available to the public and other essential services in this time of crisis. This means, trucks must continue to move between borders without any issues,” he said.

Aldi said experience with recent border closures in Queensland and South Australia, which allowed freight and made allowances for workers, provided a template for handling the latest closure.

Aldi Australia spokesman Adrian Christie said the supermarket chain didn’t currently perceive the border closure as being an issue.

“We’re yet to see. But our experience, based on the Queensland stores, is the prioritisation of freight, particularly for grocery, has not presented any problems for us,” he said.

Aldi did supply some stores from Victorian distribution centres, but anticipated no disruption to those facilities or their workforces.

During the Queensland border closure, staff at Aldi’s Coolangatta supermarket were issued passes by the Queensland government to identify them as essential workers and allow them to avoid the border closures.

But several supermarkets have already been hit by disruptions in Victoria brought on by COVID-19 testing and restrictions.

Coles supermarkets in NSW and Tasmania saw product restrictions rolled out after six workers at its massive Laverton chilled distribution facility tested positive.

Cross-border supermarket supply chains are nothing new, with many of Coles’ chilled products in Tasmania being supplied from Victoria.
But the Transport Workers is demanding clarity on what the border restrictions will mean for the trucking industry.