A small retailers’ pressure group has filed its main submission to the Competition Commission in the latest step of its campaign against supermarket dominance.
The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) announced it has codified its three major arguments in advance of a formal hearing tomorrow with the Commission, which it believes sets out the case for action in support of independent retailers nationwide.
The ACS has argued that competition authorities have been working to an inaccurate and damaging definition of the grocery market place, thus allowing the big four supermarket companies to grow.
Its submission also claims that supermarkets exert buy and seller power in the market, which harms competition, and that the planning system is an ineffective check on supermarkets’ dominance.
“We strongly believe that we have made a compelling case for action,” said James Lowman, ACS Director of Public Affairs. “The main submission is only the next step in an ongoing program of work that will ensure that the Commission are faced with a body of evidence that will be impossible to ignore.
“Most important of all is that we maintain the pressure on the Commission to ensure that they open up the books of the suppliers and supermarkets and ask the right questions. Only then will we be sure that they will see for themselves that these anti-competitive practices are taking place.”
