Australia’s commercial gardening and nursery sector has for the first time gone public with its concerns about Bunnings’ market power and how it treats growers, calling for the retailer to face the same scrutiny as Coles and Woolworths.

Greenlife Industry Australia Chief Executive Joanna Cave told Gary Adshead on 6PR Mornings the pressure on small hardware businesses has been clear for years, and it’s about time the national retailer is looked at with more scrutiny.

“If you’re a commercial grower of plants in Australia, it’s most likely that you will supply Bunnings and you’ll have to supply Bunnings to be in business,” Ms Cave said.

“But at the moment, because Bunnings are not regulated in any way at all, they hold all the power in the relationship, and there’s plenty of examples reported to us where growers feel that that’s unfair and creating huge stress and problems for them.”

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In a statement released to media, Bunnings Managing Director, Mike Schneider have said the following:

“We have longstanding relationships with thousands of suppliers across Australia and New Zealand, who all play a critical role in our business and our ability to deliver the best offer and experience to our customers. We’re proud to work with around 250 greenlife growers at a local, regional and national level and we work hard to build longstanding, win-win partnerships.

“We have robust processes in place, including as part of our trading agreements, to ensure those relationships are fair and transparent. We have a range of avenues available for suppliers to raise concerns with us, including our anonymous and secure reporting service.

“Many of our supplier relationships span a number of decades and generations, and over the years they have engaged our team on ways to partner, grow and collaborate to support their businesses.

“There is a wide range of retailers competing in the greenlife sector spanning big box retailers, independent nurseries, hardware chains, and an increasing number of online retailers and we estimate our market share of the category to be less than 30%.

While we respect the role industry associations like Greenlife Industry Association play, we disagree with a number of claims they’ve made. We are not aware of the specific cases they’ve raised and have reached out to request further information and to discuss these matters further.”