Retail News CRM

Tag: supply chain

  • Metcash Boosts Sales 2.8 per Cent but Warns of Food Margin Pressures

    Metcash Boosts Sales 2.8 per Cent but Warns of Food Margin Pressures

    Wholesaling giant Metcash lifted sales by 2.8 per cent in the first 18 weeks of the financial year, excluding tobacco, but warned investors that elevated food inflation could dent profit margins.

    Hardware and tools led the gains with a 6 per cent rise, while wholesale liquor climbed 5.1 per cent over the same period.

    Hardware and Drinks Outpace Core Food

    Core food expanded 2.6 per cent against the previous year, with group chair Peter Birtles noting that cost inflation continues to challenge the company’s bottom line.

    Logistics and retail expenses stayed elevated. Supply lines held stable, however, with no material disruption from Middle East shipping conflicts.

    Birtles told investors that Metcash’s “diversified portfolio, disciplined execution” and independent retail model have supported resilience despite external challenges.

    Cost Pressures Squeeze Independent Grocers

    For independent supermarkets, rising wholesale prices present a direct dilemma. Passing costs to shoppers risks losing market share to dominant chains. Absorbing them erodes thin retail margins.

    Margin pressure shifts the burden onto wholesale inventory. Distributors must lean on categories like trade hardware and commercial tools, where pricing flexibility beats daily grocery staples, to protect profits.

    New Zealand Liquor Exit Nears Completion

    Trading updates follow fiscal 2026 results of higher sales revenue but lower net profit. Warehousing and freight costs weighed on full-year earnings despite steady turnover.

    Metcash is now closing its New Zealand liquor distribution business to simplify operations and protect returns. The wind-down wraps up before the second half of fiscal 2027, reducing total earnings by approximately $2 million.

  • Coles Drops Palantir AI Software Across 840 Australian Supermarkets

    Coles will terminate its software partnership with US technology firm Palantir. The platform will leave more than 840 Australian supermarkets when the three-year contract expires.

    The system processed more than 10 billion rows of operational data. That load covered employee shifts, bakery production schedules and store-level inventory allocations.

    Operational Data and Customer Backlash

    Signed in February 2024, the agreement deployed Palantir’s Foundry operating system and artificial intelligence tools for workforce planning and supply-chain logistics. The supermarket chain confirmed the platform will exit its stores beyond 2027. Public pushback over Palantir’s government surveillance and defence contracts drove the decision.

    Advocacy group GetUp mounted a billboard campaign near hundreds of stores in July, mimicking Coles branding to challenge its privacy practices. Coles rejected claims that shopper data was exposed to external access.

    “The software is deployed within Coles’ own environment and is operated and isolated under Coles controls,” a Coles spokesperson said.

    Supplier Scrutiny and Reputational Risk

    Retailers across the Asia-Pacific region face swift commercial fallout when back-end software vendors carry political or military profiles. Enterprise procurement once rested on technical capability and cost alone. That calculation has changed. Boards must now weigh vendor reputation alongside data isolation protocols.

    Ripping out an enterprise planning platform creates operational friction and heavy switching costs. Replacing tools that coordinate thousands of store rosters and perishable stock orders takes months of procurement, technical integration and staff retraining.

    The Shift in Retail Procurement

    Work began as a standard productivity initiative while grocery chains accelerated automation to curb operating costs. Palantir’s historical ties to intelligence agencies, US immigration enforcement and foreign defence contracts turned routine back-office optimization into an active brand problem.

    A replacement tender and full system migration across the 840 supermarkets must now wrap up before the contract concludes at the end of 2027.

  • Nearly 200 Coles Shareholders Urge Retailer to Act on Plastics

    Nearly 200 Coles Shareholders Urge Retailer to Act on Plastics

    Nearly 200 Coles shareholders urged the company to break its silence over plastic use in September 2026. The demand follows the supermarket chain’s decision to stop selling Antarctic krill oil supplements.

    Rival Woolworths followed suit days later, ending the sale of krill-derived products across its supermarkets.

    Supermarket Giants Drop Antarctic Krill Lines

    Coles confirmed the product exit after conservation group Sea Shepherd spotted several unavailable krill oil items on the grocer’s website. Woolworths then ended all krill supplement sales in its own stores.

    The simultaneous delisting strips high-margin marine dietary lines from both chains. Environmental groups have long scrutinised Antarctic krill harvesting for disrupting Southern Ocean food webs.

    Shareholders Target Packaging Policies

    Investors are now pressing Coles management to address packaging waste and match Woolworths’ commitments. The shareholder group wants firm disclosures on plastic volume metrics alongside specific reduction milestones.

    Coordinated pressure on both supermarket operators accelerates packaging redesign deadlines for regional brand and private-label suppliers. Those unable to cut secondary plastics or adopt circular materials face delisting risks.

    Sourcing Audits Across Australian Aisles

    The sudden krill exit shows how quickly activist campaigns alter Australian retail range planning. RetailNews Asia has tracked similar rapid category exits across fresh produce, seafood and packaging formats in recent trading periods.

    Coles faces its next test when investors look for binding packaging targets and plastic reduction timelines at the upcoming formal shareholder meeting.

  • Australian Retail Health Index Drops to Negative 1.07 as Insolvencies Rise

    Australian Retail Health Index Drops to Negative 1.07 as Insolvencies Rise

    Australian retail conditions worsened sharply in the three months ending June 2026, dragging KPMG’s Retail Health Index down to negative 1.07 from negative 0.37 in the previous quarter.

    A steep 11.4 per cent drop in consumer sentiment drove the decline, even as total household spending and producer prices recorded modest gains.

    Pressures on cash flow and demand led to 254 retail insolvencies during the three-month period. Employers pulled back hiring across store networks, cutting job vacancies by 15.3 per cent to leave 26,000 open roles across the country. The index measures spending, sentiment, turnover, pricing and underlying business performance to gauge sector viability.

    Value Hunting Alters Store Economics

    Shoppers across Australia have shifted their habits toward planned, price-sensitive purchases rather than halting expenditure entirely. Foot traffic and checkout totals increasingly concentrate around major promotional windows such as End of Financial Year sales, thinning margins for operators between events.

    For regional retail groups and brand distributors, this concentration creates sharp operational volatility. Inventory holding costs rise between discount periods, while staffing models must flex quickly to handle brief spikes in transaction volume without blowing out payroll costs.

    Digital Channels and Labour Adjustments

    Suppliers face renegotiations on wholesale terms as storefront operators fight to protect gross margins against higher input costs. Landlords in secondary shopping centres risk longer lease negotiations, particularly where specialty fashion and discretionary merchants struggle to sustain standard rent-to-sales ratios.

    The contraction follows a prolonged period of cautious buying that started when higher borrowing costs began constraining disposable income across major metropolitan centres. Earlier quarters had managed to absorb rising operational overheads through modest price adjustments, but consumer pushback against shelf prices has now limited further retail pass-through.

    Promotional Execution Takes Centre Stage

    Relief for the sector depends heavily on whether lower supply chain disruptions and sustained population growth can offset cautious household budgets. Retailers are directing investment into automated personalisation and inventory tracking systems to lift conversion rates ahead of high-volume seasonal trading.

    Merchant performance across the market now hinges on order execution during the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounting calendar.

  • Virtue Mirage Launches 17-Tool Fashion Personalisation Platform

    Virtue Mirage Launches 17-Tool Fashion Personalisation Platform

    Australian entrepreneur Lukas Cervenan launched Virtue Mirage in September 2026, introducing a hyper-personalisation platform designed to reshape the online fashion shopping experience.

    The system offers 17 tools that create a digital twin of a shopper using photos or exact measurements, extending personalisation across entire online stores rather than limiting it to individual products.

    By replacing traditional model imagery across every product gallery, the platform allows shoppers to see garments on their real body sizes across participating stores running on services such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

    How the Network Functions

    Shoppers manage their profiles through a central dashboard that stores saved outfits, real-time stock availability, and tailored size advisories for specific garments. A semantic search engine pairs items across a merchant’s inventory directly onto the user’s avatar, rather than displaying isolated product grids. New inventory drops can be pre-rendered for registered customer profiles before users land on the store page.

    To our knowledge, we are the only platform in the world that is transforming entire websites. So a size-16 shopper is never looking at a professional size-6 model; she sees her real size, on her real body, in every image across a brand’s entire store.

    The Return Problem Across Regional Fashion

    Retail margins across Asia-Pacific e-commerce continue to erode under the weight of reverse logistics. Fit failures drive the bulk of fashion returns, worsened by bracket-buying habits where shoppers purchase several sizes of a single item with the intention of returning most of them. Eliminating the disconnect between model proportions and real customer bodies attacks reverse logistics costs at the point of discovery.

    Standalone virtual fitting widgets rarely alter overall conversion because they sit isolated on individual product detail pages. By transforming whole catalogues into personalised galleries, operators attempt to lift checkout completion while defending independent web stores against dominant regional marketplaces like Shein and Zalora. The primary technical hurdle remains rendering fidelity, as artificial intelligence tools frequently struggle with drape and textile weight across edge sizes.

    Decade of Commercial Imaging Preceded Launch

    The platform builds directly on Cervenan’s commercial imaging business, Virtue Creative Studios, which produced e-commerce and campaign photo shoots for more than 500 apparel brands over the past ten years. That production background informed the platform’s visual architecture, which formats store catalogs to allow external AI shopping agents and semantic web scrapers to parse inventory data directly.

    Participating merchants on Shopify and BigCommerce are now integrating the software into their live storefronts ahead of peak year-end trading cycles.

  • Beauty Sector Vegetable Oils Market to Reach $7.72 Billion by 2031

    Beauty Sector Vegetable Oils Market to Reach $7.72 Billion by 2031

    Personal care formulators will push global spending on cosmetic vegetable oils from US$5.84 billion this year to $7.72 billion by 2031, research from MarketsandMarkets shows.

    Asia-Pacific demand for plant-based ingredients is driving the bulk of that expansion as regional beauty brands overhaul skincare and haircare recipes.

    Coconut oil leads ingredient demand

    Coconut oil will retain the largest individual volume share throughout the forecast period, supported by heavy use in commercial haircare and barrier creams across Asian markets. Conventional oils remain dominant despite the push for specialized extracts, capturing 76.4 percent of total market value this year.

    Clean-label reformulations are forcing raw material buyers to secure traceable supply chains. Consumer goods manufacturers across Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia are replacing synthetic emollients with plant derivatives to meet export standards in Western markets and satisfy domestic consumer scrutiny.

    Supply pressures shift procurement

    For regional manufacturers, the shift changes cost profiles in core product lines. Palm, coconut, and seed oil derivatives carry agricultural price volatility that chemical feedstocks avoid, squeezing operating margins when harvest yields drop in major producing hubs like Indonesia and the Philippines.

    Retail buyers in Asia are tightening shelf requirements, penalizing brands that cannot substantiate sustainable sourcing claims on product packaging. Mass-market brands that rely on low-cost conventional oils must balance ingredient certification costs against price-sensitive consumer baskets in developing markets.

    Category targets through 2031

    Formulation trends over the past five years laid the groundwork for this transition, as major beauty conglomerates divested petroleum-heavy bases in favor of botanical alternatives. That initial switch in prestige skincare has now moved down into mass personal care and supermarket private labels.

    Procurement teams now look toward the 2031 horizon, when cosmetic vegetable oil purchases will absorb nearly $1.9 billion in additional annual spending.

  • Foreign Tech Investors Pay up to US$15,000 for Access to Chinese Factory Floors

    Foreign Tech Investors Pay up to US$15,000 for Access to Chinese Factory Floors

    Foreign investors and tech executives are paying up to US$15,000 each to tour Chinese manufacturing plants. The visits cover robotics, electric vehicle and artificial intelligence facilities across five industrial hubs.

    Western and regional boardrooms face pressure to see if Chinese automation has pulled ahead of global rivals. These paid delegations offer a direct look at mainland hardware supply chains.

    Programmes span Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hefei. Shanghai-based data research firm Baiguan charges up to US$15,000 for a five-day itinerary. Around half its participants come from Southeast Asia. Tech tour agency Glopen reported a 50 per cent jump in enquiries during 2026, mostly from European and Singaporean clients. It now operates more than 100 single-day corporate visits every month. Tech Buzz China founder Rui Ma has organised 11 delegations since 2019, including an April tour through three cities focusing on robotics.

    The Business Behind Factory Tourism

    State backing has turned industrial site visits into commercial business across the mainland. Beijing has designated more than 140 demonstration sites for industrial tourism. The sector generated US$17.8 billion last year and is projected to reach 300 billion yuan (US$44.6 billion) by 2029.

    Public rates for individual factory visits usually run around US$60, but premium access commands steep markups. Xiaomi’s electric vehicle assembly plant in Beijing has recorded more than 250,000 visitors since March 2024. Entry slots from Xiaomi’s official lottery system have been scalped on secondary platforms for up to 2,000 yuan (US$300), despite company rules barring transfers.

    Institutional investors have quietly joined the circuit. US firms Dimension, Capital Group and Thrive Capital have all sent representatives to inspect mainland production setups. European corporate delegations have also toured sites to study state-backed technology coordination.

    Hardware Dependence and Supply Realities

    Consumer hardware and robotics brands see that physical supply chains remain tethered to southern China. Geopolitical posturing has not changed that reality. Western developers still depend on mainland ecosystems for sensors, battery cells, structural frames and precision actuators. Replicating those supplier clusters outside the Pearl River Delta remains slow and capital intensive.

    Visitors risk mistaking demonstration speed for total commercial dominance. Non-Chinese technology firms still hold most global market share, high-margin software profits and core intellectual property. In sectors like autonomous robotaxis, Chinese domestic deployment continues to move cautiously. Regulators remain concerned about urban transport employment.

    Shenzhen Emerges as the Focal Point

    Years of infrastructure spending transformed Shenzhen from a contract assembly zone into an integrated hardware design centre. The current tour rush builds on that base. Foreign visitor arrivals in Shenzhen jumped 70 per cent last year and rose another 30 per cent in the first quarter. Total entries topped 5 million through August.

    Founders use 10-day visa-free entry policies to test prototypes directly with component suppliers. Local operators have opened communal hacker houses for visiting robotics and AI engineers. Informal network groups coordinate factory access across Shenzhen and Silicon Valley.

    Next up is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November, which Shenzhen will host. Municipal officials plan to show automated assembly plants and urban drone networks to pitch the city’s hardware infrastructure to visiting regional trade delegations.

  • Petrobangla Halves Net Worth Requirement to $50 Million for Spot LNG Suppliers

    Petrobangla Halves Net Worth Requirement to $50 Million for Spot LNG Suppliers

    Petrobangla has slashed its financial and experience thresholds for spot liquefied natural gas suppliers, halving the required net worth to $50 million to ease severe national fuel shortages.

    The state-run energy company now demands just one completed supply contract with no minimum cargo volume, dropping a previous rule requiring 0.5 million tonnes delivered across two separate years.

    Lower barriers for commodity traders

    Under the revised criteria issued on August 29, Petrobangla eliminated requirements for suppliers to own or charter an LNG vessel, prove experience with floating storage and regasification units, or guarantee lean gas containing at least 91 percent methane. Applicants no longer need to verify an absence of failed cargo deliveries over the past five years or limit their arbitration losses to three awards. For joint ventures, the lead partner must cover 75 percent of the $50 million financial capacity, while partners supply the remaining 25 percent.

    “We are looking for more participants in the spot market,” Petrobangla Director for operations and mines Md Shoyeb said.

    Pressure on industrial output

    For industrial manufacturers and export supply chains across South Asia, reliable gas flow dictates factory uptime and power tariffs. Bangladesh faced severe disruption in August when average gas deliveries dropped to 2,235 million cubic feet per day against official demand of 3,860 million cubic feet per day, the lowest August supply figure in a decade. Terminal outages and global supply bottlenecks forced emergency spot purchases at more than $28 per million British thermal units, up sharply from historical norms of $10 to $12 per MMBtu.

    Lowering entry barriers allows smaller trading houses without dedicated fleets to bid against established multinational commodity merchants. The tradeoff sits squarely in operational risk: by waiving past delivery guarantees and vessel charter proofs, Petrobangla accepts higher exposure to cargo defaults and scheduling failures when spot vessel availability tightens.

    Procurement shift since 2024

    The revised criteria follow a governance overhaul that suspended the Quick Enhancement of Electricity and Energy Supply Act, which previously allowed direct, non-tender contracts. The interim administration shifted spot purchases under the Public Procurement Rules 2025, expanding the active spot tender roster to 30 companies from an earlier pool where purchases were concentrated among five suppliers.

    Applications for the new supplier pool close on September 15.

  • EU Warns Pakistan That GSP Plus Benefits Cannot Be Taken for Granted

    EU Warns Pakistan That GSP Plus Benefits Cannot Be Taken for Granted

    The European Union has warned Pakistan that trade preferences under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus cannot be taken for granted as the current framework expires at the end of this year.

    EU Ambassador Raimundas Karoblis told Dawn that Islamabad must address compliance issues under 27 international conventions before reapplying for the successor regime ahead of the Dec 31, 2028 transition deadline.

    Tariff Exposure for Apparel Suppliers

    European buyers take roughly 28 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports. Nearly 90 per cent of those shipments qualify for duty relief under the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus framework, known as GSP Plus.

    Textile and apparel factories generate between 70 per cent and 76 per cent of sales to the European market. Leather goods, processed foods, and beverages also rely on zero-tariff access. Without it, local producers struggle against rivals in South and Southeast Asia.

    Pakistan has held GSP Plus status since 2014. The current regulation expires at the end of this year, but existing beneficiaries receive a transition window running until December 31, 2028. European officials stress that the transition does not guarantee automatic inclusion in the next cycle.

    The situation is not certain. And, of course, GSP+ preferences cannot be taken for granted.

    New Benchmarks and Regional Competition

    For European fashion brands and sourcing heads, losing preferential tariffs on Pakistani cotton and knitwear would shift costs overnight. Standard tariffs would add immediate import duties on garments. That would wipe out margins against competitors in Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam.

    Brussels has stripped trade perks before. Sri Lanka lost its GSP Plus standing in 2010 over human rights issues, forcing clothing exporters there to renegotiate pricing across European retail accounts. Pakistan faces partial or full suspension during the transition window if regulators find compliance failures.

    Stricter Conditions for Islamabad

    A European Commission review covering the 2023 to 2025 period cited compliance problems in Pakistan, noting regression on forced labour, judicial independence, and civil rights. Outgoing Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi stated that the report understates the country’s reform progress across international treaties.

    The successor framework expands qualifying criteria from 27 international conventions to 32. Islamabad has ratified the five additional treaties. Still, European monitors require a detailed action plan with verified metrics before granting approval under the new system.

    Formal European Commission monitoring reviews will run ahead of the December 31, 2028 transition deadline. Those findings will determine whether Pakistani garment manufacturers retain zero-tariff access to European ports.

  • Tetra Pak Names Michael Wu Managing Director for Oceania Operations

    Tetra Pak Names Michael Wu Managing Director for Oceania Operations

    Tetra Pak appointed Michael Wu as managing director of its Oceania business, taking charge of operations across Australia and New Zealand effective September 1.

    Wu brings 18 years of executive experience across the Swiss-Swedish packaging giant, stepping into the role after serving as market operations quality and sustainability director.

    Leadership Track Across Southeast Asian Markets

    Before his latest global role, Wu led Tetra Pak businesses across Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. His appointment shifts an executive with deep Southeast Asian operating experience into the mature Oceania dairy, beverage and liquid food packaging market.

    Food manufacturers across Australia and New Zealand face tight regulatory mandates on packaging circularity and emissions reductions. Placing a former quality and sustainability lead in charge of Oceania reflects packaging producers aligning commercial leadership directly with compliance demands from major supermarket chains and brand owners.

    Shifting Packaging Demands in Oceania

    For beverage processors and dairy co-operatives in the region, processing and packaging machinery upgrades require heavy capital expenditure. Wu inherits client relationships across Australia and New Zealand where processors are balancing automation investments against shifting retail carton consumption.

    Competition from alternative barrier packaging and local carton converters adds pressure on supply agreements. Tetra Pak has relied on integrated equipment and service contracts across Australasia to protect its volume footprint against cheaper imported carton blanks and plastic formats.

    Regional Supply Chain Realities

    Wu oversaw rapid packaging volume growth across Southeast Asian beverage markets before his transition into global sustainability and operations quality management. That background gives him direct insight into regional raw material flows and converting plant efficiency.

    His immediate focus turns to commercial execution across key Oceania accounts as dairy and beverage brand owners finalise processing equipment budgets for the coming operating cycle.

  • Destination Italy Adds Two Frozen Pizza Lines Across Australia and New Zealand

    Destination Italy Adds Two Frozen Pizza Lines Across Australia and New Zealand

    Destination Italy expanded its frozen pizza lineup across Australia and New Zealand on September 7, 2026, launching two Italian-made varieties into regional supermarket freezers.

    Made in Italy, Woodfired Puttanesca and Woodfired Salame ship directly to Australian and New Zealand retailers catering to demand for imported convenience meals.

    Ingredients and Recipe Formats

    The Woodfired Puttanesca pizza uses a traditional tomato and mozzarella base topped with black olives, capers, and oregano. Woodfired Salame pairs that same base with sliced salami, produced in Italy before frozen transport.

    Both products rely on Italian-baked woodfired crusts to stand out from local alternatives. The format targets shoppers who want regional recipes without paying foodservice prices.

    Premium Competition in the Freezer Aisle

    Major grocers across Australia and New Zealand have steadily reallocated freezer space to imported and specialty private-label items over the past three years. Mainstream frozen pizzas face ongoing margin compression. That pressure has prompted distributors to push higher-value imported SKUs onto shelves.

    For retailers, imported lines offer higher basket values in a category historically dominated by discount domestic labels. Cold-chain freight costs and exchange-rate swings between the euro and the Australian dollar remain key operational hurdles, squeezing margins when shipping volumes fluctuate.

    Retail Distribution Timelines

    Destination Italy built its initial ANZ footprint around core woodfired SKUs before widening the range with specialized regional flavor profiles. Across the supermarket frozen sector, brands are taking similar premium routes, using origin-certified manufacturing to defend shelf share.

    Supermarkets will roll out the two new varieties across national freezer networks through the remainder of the month.

  • Bangladesh Plans New Effluent Plant to Protect $5 Billion Leather Export Target

    Bangladesh Plans New Effluent Plant to Protect $5 Billion Leather Export Target

    Bangladesh will build a new central effluent treatment plant at the Savar tannery estate to protect its target of reaching $5 billion in leather and footwear exports by 2030.

    The existing facility processes between 14,000 and 18,000 cubic metres of liquid waste a day, well below its designed capacity of 25,000 cubic metres. Volumes surge to 45,000 cubic metres daily during peak slaughter periods such as Eid-ul-Azha, overwhelming the site and blocking factories from securing international environmental certifications.

    Overhauling the Savar Estate

    Commerce and Industry Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir said the government will select a private operator through an open tender to construct and run the replacement facility. Larger tanneries will receive financial and technical backing to build individual treatment units, while non-compliant operators will receive assisted exit packages to leave the cluster. Tanneries that stay must secure certification from the Leather Working Group.

    Infrastructure bottlenecks extend beyond liquid waste. Bay Group Managing Director Ziaur Rahman reported spending nearly Tk30 million on solid-waste handling last year alone, citing unresolved gas shortages and unpaved roads across the estate. Bangladesh shipped $1.76 billion worth of leather goods and footwear across 105 markets last year, yet roughly 65 per cent of leather leaves the country as crust leather rather than finished consumer merchandise.

    Cutting Red Tape for Footwear Makers

    Footwear manufacturers are pushing to diversify beyond raw hides. Non-leather shoes now generate 31 per cent of the sector’s export revenue, but Bangladesh controls less than 0.5 per cent of global trade in the category. The Footwear Leathergoods and Accessories Exporters Association estimates that lifting that share to 5 per cent would add $3.5 billion in export value.

    Across Southeast Asia, rival manufacturing hubs have pulled ahead by streamlining factory setup and clearing environmental hurdles. Vietnam requires four compliance documents for footwear exporters, whereas Bangladeshi manufacturers must navigate 23 separate licences and 190 administrative filings, according to trade group data. That administrative drag slows foreign joint ventures and leaves machinery import permits stalled for months.

    Government negotiators are preparing bilateral talks with Japan to widen tariff concessions on finished leather items before Bangladesh loses its least developed country trade preferences.

  • Coles Drops Palantir Contract After Activist Campaign over Data Use

    Coles Drops Palantir Contract After Activist Campaign over Data Use

    Coles will end its enterprise partnership with United States software vendor Palantir. The decision follows an 85,000-signature petition against deploying military-grade data systems in Australian supermarkets.

    Company officials confirmed the business will let the three-year agreement expire in 2027 rather than sign an extension.

    Rostering and Supply Chain Deployment

    The grocer brought in Palantir in early 2024 to manage backend administration across its store network. The software scheduled shift rosters and coordinated bakery production runs. It also modelled inventory flow through distribution centres.

    Community advocacy group GetUp launched a campaign against the deal shortly after the contract took effect. Activists cited Palantir’s contracts with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Israeli Defence Forces. They argued military-grade systems had no place in retail operations.

    A spokesperson for the chain rejected claims that the platform ever tracked shoppers or gathered aisle surveillance feeds. “Palantir’s technology has delivered value across Coles’ operations, particularly in rostering, store operations and supply chain planning,” the spokesperson said.

    The Enterprise Risk in Retail AI

    Supermarket operators across the Asia-Pacific region are rushing to automate workforce management and stock replenishment. Yet vendor selection brings brand exposure that procurement teams often underestimate. When enterprise software providers run heavy defence and state intelligence divisions, consumer-facing retailers absorb the reputational fallout directly at the checkout.

    Coles chose to let the contract lapse quietly at its natural term rather than terminate immediately. That approach lets the grocer run down existing IT commitments while scouting replacement platforms for store-level forecasting and labor scheduling.

    A Push Toward Neutral Systems

    Earlier, the company maintained Palantir never controlled internal grocer data or held rights to repurpose operational metrics. It declined to detail commercial reasons for walking away from the contract when asked for clarification.

    Chains across Australia and the wider region face sharper scrutiny over in-store data management. Woolworths and Coles both encountered customer resistance in recent years when testing automated checkout monitoring and digital loss-prevention systems.

    Attention now turns to how the retailer will transition its store scheduling and supply chain workflows to alternative software providers before the agreement concludes in 2027.

  • Indian Appliance Makers Swap Copper for Aluminium to Defend Shrinking Margins

    Indian Appliance Makers Swap Copper for Aluminium to Defend Shrinking Margins

    Electronics and appliance manufacturers across India are replacing copper with aluminium and expanding domestic component sourcing after input inflation squeezed industry operating margins into single digits.

    Producers have already raised retail prices on air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines by 10 to 12 percent across three rounds since January, while absorbing an additional 7 to 10 percent to protect sales volumes.

    Value Engineering and Sourcing Shifts

    Surging copper prices, which rose roughly 45 percent year on year, have forced appliance brands to redesign motors, connecting pipes, and coils. Replacing copper with aluminium, steel, or alternative alloys saves between 2 and 6 percent of final manufacturing costs. Strong buying from artificial intelligence data centres and electric vehicle producers has tied up global copper output months in advance.

    Memory component prices have also doubled or tripled on heavy AI infrastructure demand, driving price hikes of 20 to 40 percent on smartphones, laptops, and televisions. Indian consumer electronics manufacturers import between 30 and 40 percent of their inputs, leaving factory gates exposed to higher freight rates and currency depreciation.

    Supply chain snarls have caused direct revenue losses. Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals missed out on nearly Rs 200 crore in sales during the previous quarter because of material shortages. At contract manufacturer PG Electroplast, the cost to build 500,000 air conditioners climbed from Rs 700 crore last year to Rs 940 crore.

    Local Manufacturing Expansion

    Brands are countering these cost pressures by shifting away from overseas suppliers. LG Electronics India now sources a key moulding resin domestically after importing its entire requirement until March, while engineering teams adjust product designs to trim material volume per unit. Voltas and Bajaj Electricals have rolled out similar value engineering programs across their appliance lineups.

    Cost restructuring of this scale reflects a broader defensive pivot across Asian consumer hardware manufacturing. When consumer demand resists further retail price hikes, brands must either cut bill-of-materials costs or surrender volume in price-sensitive suburban and rural markets.

    PG Electroplast plans to commission domestic production of air conditioner compressors between December and January, alongside a separate manufacturing line with an annual capacity of two million units.

  • UltraTech Cement to Add 600 Electric Trucks to Indian Logistics Fleet

    UltraTech Cement to Add 600 Electric Trucks to Indian Logistics Fleet

    UltraTech Cement will deploy more than 600 heavy-duty electric trucks across its Indian supply chain by December 2026. The fleet will haul over five million metric tonnes of clinker and raw materials annually across seven states.

    Operations will span industrial corridors in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Odisha. The company calculated that replacing diesel prime movers at this scale cuts net carbon emissions by more than 117,000 tonnes annually, eliminating the consumption of roughly 39 million litres of diesel fuel each year.

    Fleet suppliers and regional deployment

    Procurement contracts have been split among domestic and international commercial vehicle builders. Suppliers include Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, IPLTech, Sany and Energy In Motion, alongside third-party logistics operators.

    The heavy vehicles will manage mine-to-plant transport as well as inter-plant transfers of clinker. UltraTech currently runs more than 850 alternative-fuel commercial vehicles, a tally that blends compressed natural gas units with battery-electric haulers.

    Scaling heavy-duty electric freight

    Electrifying heavy industrial freight remains rare across Asian emerging markets, where high battery pack costs and limited mega-watt charging infrastructure keep most operators tied to diesel. UltraTech tested the waters in June when it put 45 electric trucks into service on a 250-kilometre clinker route between Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh with Energy In Motion, bringing its dedicated electric fleet to 89 units at the time. Expanding that base almost sevenfold indicates commercial confidence in operating economics on fixed factory-to-mine loops.

    Delivery schedules for the new vehicle batches begin over the coming quarters, with all 600 prime movers scheduled to enter full revenue service before the end of 2026.