Charles Abel • Club Lecture
Grocery Code Adjudicator Christine Tacon
SUPERVISING fair play in the food chain is not for the faint-hearted. But after seven years as the UK’s Grocery Code Adjudicator Club member Christine Tacon has shown what tenacity, industry expertise and a readiness to grapple with the nitty-gritty can achieve. Amusingly, in her first year, Grocer magazine featured a cartoon of the new adjudicator as a shark with teeth bared. A similar cartoon appeared a little later – with ‘Tesco’ in the shark’s jaws! But is punishment the answer to curbing supermarket abuses? The legally binding Code stipulates how designated retailers must treat their direct suppliers, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator Act gives significant powers of investigation and enforcement, including fines of up to 1% of turnover, in a sector worth over £100bn annually. Today 13 retailers deal with 1000s of direct suppliers, some big enough to look after themselves, but many not. Bullying retailers “Supermarkets can take advantage of their power, making it the suppliers’ problem if the weather changes, a customer complains, or even if the supermarket gets their order wrong. This bullying behaviour can build up and lead to situations like I found at Tesco when I investigated.” The Code had existed for three years before Christine’s tenure, without much impact. Several notable cases show how Christine’s approach has veered away from ‘investigation and punishment’, towards ‘collaboration and enhanced efficiency’. The results have been significant. Collaboration for efficiency “I’m a production engineer, I love efficiency, making systems work better,” Christine explained. “Bad practice is inefficient. It takes up time and energy. I wanted to be measured by how things have improved for suppliers, not the size of the fines.”
Supermarket
regulation The Club’s latest Monday Evening Lecture heard from Grocery Code Adjudicator Christine Tacon. Charles Abel reports
06 • The Farmers Club Spring 2020
The notorious Tesco investigation in 2015 is a case in point. It found the retailer was in breach of the Code, not paying in full, and not paying on time. Some suppliers were paid up to a year late, others were charged twice for promotions. Mistakes were taking months to correct, during which the retailer held onto millions of pounds. Suppliers could do nothing about it. The investigation took a year, damaged Tesco’s reputation and cost it millions. At the time the adjudicator had no powers to fine, so Tesco was given a list of required changes and it took them 6 months to prove it was paying on time and correcting mistakes quickly. More recently the Co-op was found to be in breach, cutting the stores that suppliers were stocked in without reasonable notice, and
