Pfft, I won't even shop at ALDI.

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Most of the things sold @ ALDIS is made in Australia !!

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And ALL of the profit goes back to the homeland....

They always reminds of a store from the eastern block or Russia where all the shelves are bare except for a limited range of one or two products and you need food stamps to buy anything....dont know why I guess its just the look of the store.

Pfft, I won't even shop at ALDI.

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Most of the things sold @ ALDIS is made in Australia !!

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And ALL of the profit goes back to the homeland....

They always reminds of a store from the eastern block or Russia where all the shelves are bare except for a limited range of one or two products and you need food stamps to buy anything....dont know why I guess its just the look of the store.

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Matches the usual clientele

C'mon lads and lassies, if you feel strongly about it dont be sooks when you go shopping.

Go for the Oz product. And I dont mean the old Oz icons that are now 100% owned by overseas companies, like Arnotts and Vegemite.

Look for "Australian owned" & "Product of Australia"

C'mon aussie C'mon C'mon..................

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You won't find anyone more fanatical about buying Australian where ever possible but one that gets me with Vegemite, it's been owned by Kraft or a subsidary thereof for many years indeed. In 1926, in fact, it was a deal between the producer of vegemite in Australia (4 years after it's inception) so that he could produce Kraft's processed cheese locally.

and now it tastes like a black, salty candle anyway

I find the worst one is Kirk's Softdrinks. Sure, used to be Australian, and if you look on the packet it still says Australian Owned and Made...Well, it's owned by bloody Coca Cola (Amatil) an Australian Listed therefore Australian company Dodgy mongrels

Lumpy

Most of the things sold @ ALDIS is made in Australia !!

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And ALL of the profit goes back to the homeland....

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Catch 22...Help employ the mass of Australian Workers but have the ultimate company profits move offshore, or help an 'Australian' Company employ where ever the labour is cheapest and find ways to dodge the tax paid in Australia then move the profits offshore anyway...

Wait....no catch 22 at all

Lumpy

That's got to be THE most pathetic thing I've read this week....beside my pay packet..

And yet again I ask why are we doing this to ourselves....

Edit: We have most of the machinery from ADI Maribynong here in our factory from when it closed it's doors and retrenched all the workers...

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It's mainly due to our fantastic unions and governments driving up our costs of living and production, we just can't compete. We are over governed and over taxed.

It's the price we pay for having higher wages. Which we need to cover the higher cost of living.

Re:

And ALL of the profit goes back to the homeland....

And there is SHELL, MOBIL, BP, GM HOLDEN, FORD AUSTRALIA, TOYOTA, MITSUBISHI.......... All Australian Companies ??????????

I am no ecomomy or accounting expert.

But even if the above mentioned companies do take profits back overseas. They dont just sit on the money. After all, to build service stations, they need local products and workers, to run service stations local workes, truck drivers refineries Aussie taxes etc etc. Then the company gets bigger and expands.

What we as a country miss out on is the large percentage of tax from the profits. If we could fix that, then there may be more incentive for these businesses to move more and more infrastructure over to Oz.

Guys there is so much more to this equation, and I am only a lay.

The original reason for this topic was the Bloody French making Aussie military gear. Now history tells us that ther performance in conflict is nothing to write home about, but maybe, there abilty to run companies and make decent military gear is. Time will tell.

Scotty

Pfft, I won't even shop at ALDI.

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This is from The Australian

Coles, Woolies flogging flawed home-brand future: Aldi chief

The shelves will be groaning with too many choices, Blair Speedy reports

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25sep06

THE Australian boss of discount supermarket chain Aldi has warned Coles and Woolworths that their home-brand strategies are fundamentally flawed.

The major supermarket chains are both rolling out multi-tiered "private label" product lines in an attempt to boost profit margins.

Coles has a three-tiered strategy, from the budget-priced "smart buy" range in plain white and red packaging to the mid-market "You'll love Coles" range with more colourful packaging, including pictures, and the top-shelf "Coles finest" range, to be launched this Christmas, pitched at premium price points.

Coles is aiming to draw 30 per cent of its supermarket sales from private label lines, as it struggles to fulfil ambitious earnings forecasts laid out as part of its defence against an unwelcome takeover bid from private equity investors.

Woolworths' budget-priced range, Home Brand, has been around for 20 years and now comprises almost 1000 different products.

To this has now been added the "Woolworths select" range, pitched as a slightly cheaper, brand-quality alternative to name-brand products, which has 400 products on the shelves with another 200 due by January.

Private label products typically sell at a discount to their branded shelf-mates, allowing shoppers to save money.

But retailers get to save even more because they are not paying manufacturers any premium for the value of outside brands, thus increasing retailers' sales margins.

But Michael Kloeters, group managing director of Aldi's Australian operation, says that presenting shoppers with two types of Coles or Woolworths branded products, one a plain-wrapped "budget" offering and the other a flashier and higher-priced item, sends the wrong message.

"Having a two-tier strategy raises the question: which one has the brand quality and which one is inferior? They can hardly offer the same quality in both packages, meaning you may have one quality at the (lower) price point, then you have the brand quality at a higher price point," Kloeters says.

Such a strategy is essentially telling shoppers that if they buy the plain-wrapped product, they're getting inferior quality.

Aldi's model, honed over more than 50 years of retailing, is to offer private labels almost exclusively. A maximum 5 per cent of Aldi's product range is made up of "must-have" branded goods that shoppers will not go without. In Australia that means Vegemite, Nescafe and Milo. Almost everything else in the store is sold under an Aldi private label.

Unlike Woolies and Coles, Aldi's private label stock doesn't have a common brand for all ranges. Its frozen peas are sold under the Market Fare brand, which shoppers would not know was owned by Aldi unless they took a close look at the pack. Frozen seafood is sold under the Aldi-owned Port View, Ocean Royale and Viking brands.

"Our quality is as good as the leading brands, so you might as well show it to the customer via your design and giving it a unique identity, just like the brands, but you can sell them for less because you don't have to invest in heavy marketing," Kloeters says.

Having individual private label brands for each product range also removes the stigma of buying discount groceries that may deter status-conscious shoppers. In Germany, this has seen Aldi reach a massive 85 per cent of shoppers, across all social demographics.

"You would find a Merc in our car park as much as a bicycle, because we are not a cheap discounter. We are offering great prices for quality products," Kloeters says.

Choice in Aldi supermarkets is limited - there is only one variety of orange juice, one type of tasty cheese and one brand of bleach. But Kloeters says each one represents the best value for money in the market.

"Do you need 50 orange juices? No you don't, so we look at them and ask what is the best value for money, what would I like to have at home, and then we ask suppliers to get as close as we can to that orange juice to make sure we have the perfect one.

"We offer contracts to our suppliers and they do that orange juice contract, but they are the only one on the shelf, meaning we can do it far more efficiently because we haven't got that much competition on our shelves for starters, so the average quantity we sell each day of that brand is a lot greater.

"It's not rocket science why our value-for-money proposition is a good one. We just cut costs where we don't think they're necessary."

He says that not only is the quality of Aldi's private labelled goods up to the same standards as rival branded products, they often are the branded products.

"Sometimes the suppliers are exactly the same and sometimes the product is exactly the same, it's just a different label - more often than not, actually."

Tailored to incorporate similar designs to the leading brands in each market, Aldi's private labels look remarkably similar to name-brand products. Kloeters says this is no accident.

"The brands in the market have certain common design elements suggesting this is a pasta sauce, or this is spaghetti or whatever. You should be able to identify what kind of product it is when you look at the package design," he says.

"You can't offer something the customer hasn't seen before. If you come up with a green cola bottle, nobody will buy it. It would feel strange. You've got to have red - that signals it's cola."

But while Aldi is focused on cost containment, Kloeters insists the company doesn't screw suppliers for every last cent in savings.

"People think being a discounter means squeezing suppliers, jeopardising quality. But it's exactly the opposite. We start with the quality first and then discount the retail (price)," he says.

A recent survey of fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers by market researcher AC Nielsen found that Aldi was seen as the best retailer for fairness of trading terms and negotiations.

About 75 per cent of products sold in Aldi's Australian stores are Australian-made, a figure Kloeters claims is the highest proportion of any Australian supermarket retailer.

It's also not stingy with staff, paying them as much as $5 more than the standard $15 an hour and hiring them on a permanent basis.

"We are working with permanent part-time and full-time people rather than with casuals. When you look at other supermarkets, the checkouts are staffed by schoolkids. We believe that hiring mature adults at a high salary, getting the best people thinking, you will get the best results," Kloeters says.

He is also proud to point out that Aldi's are the only checkout operators in Australia who get to sit down.

"Why are our cashiers the only ones who are sitting? It's very simple - it costs more money and that's why the other guys don't do it."

Instead, Aldi saves costs by limiting advertising, doing without in-house legal, human resources, industrial relations and public relations staff, and limiting its advertising.

But the key is the private labels, which allow Aldi to offer an extensive range of groceries with just a few varieties per range.

"Not having as many products means we can live with a smaller store. A smaller store means less rent. Less rent means lower retail (prices)," Kloeters says.

Accordingly, he is unconcerned about Coles and Woolworths steaming into the private label market. "We have the lowest operating cost in the Australian market already, meaning we are able to offer the best value for money. They may try to mimic that, but they will never be able to offer the same value." He says Aldi's Australian annual sales are of the same order as David Jones and Officeworks, putting them in the $1.2-$1.8 billion range.

While he declines to comment on Aldi's earnings or profit margins, he says the Australian operations are now profitable - well within the 10-year time limit set by the German parent company, controlled by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht.

privacy terms © The Australian

The original reason for this topic was the Bloody French making Aussie military gear. Now history tells us that ther performance in conflict is nothing to write home about, but maybe, there abilty to run companies and make decent military gear is. Time will tell.

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The (French) Exocet: The only reason the British still had a naval fleet after the Falklands The pommies even tried to help by building boats from an aluminium/magnesium (including others) alloy

Surely, all other things aside, this seriously has to compromise Australian Military Armament, at least in the smaller point-bang weapons? I mean, we're relying on a international company, to run operations from 10,000mile away?

Then again, we pay full price for second hand, ooops "refurbished" tanks from the yanks...

Lumpy

What we as a country miss out on is the large percentage of tax from the profits.

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All oversees based companies still have to comply with local taxation laws and taxes on profits.