Australian supplier SPC says it still supplies fruit to Woolworths supermarkets

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 10, 2019 at 07:30
2 min read
By AFP Australia

Multiple Facebook posts shared tens of thousands of times since at least 2016 claim that Australian supermarket chain Woolworths has stopped buying fruit from Australian food supplier SPC. The claim is false; SPC told AFP in December 2019 that it still supplies products to Woolworths; a search of the Woolworths online store in December 2019 found results for SPC fruit products; Woolworths announced in November 2016 that it had renegotiated an agreement with SPC to sell its fruit products.

One Facebook post was published here on November 18, 2016. It has been shared more than 143,000 times.

The post reads: “Woolworths Australia’s traitors! Woolworths have decided to source your fruit from overseas and will stop buying Australian fruits from SPC & Ardmona. Lets send them a message about putting Australians first vote with your feet.”

The post’s caption reads: “This is where free trade agreements suck.”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

The same text post was published here on December 4, 2019.

The claim is false; SPC told AFP it still supplies fruit products to Woolworths supermarkets.

SPC is an Australian food processing company, which also sells the Ardmona brand of canned tomatoes and pie fruit.

In response to the Facebook post, an SPC spokesperson told AFP by email on December 6 that “this is indeed old news and is not true.”

“Woolworths still buys its fruit from SPC and in fact has increased it this year,” the spokesperson said.

Woolworths stocks SPC and Ardmona branded products, but SPC also supplies deciduous fruit to Woolworths for its private label brand.

In November 2016, Woolworths said it was negotiating its deal with SPC to supply deciduous fruit to the supermarket, and had ended a deal with SPC in which it supplied tinned tomatoes.

Shortly after news of the negotiation, Woolworths announced it had signed a deal with SPC in which it would continue to supply deciduous fruit to the supermarket.

Below is a screenshot of the press release:

A keyword search for “SPC” on the Woolworths website on December 6 found more than 42 products, some of which were fruit based products.

Below is a screenshot of the results:

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