With WWF-Australia, we reviewed the ecological sustainability of more than 80 per cent of the fresh wild caught fish sold from our fish counters during the year, as part of our commitment to only source responsibly fished and farmed seafood by 2015. In February 2012, a sustainable seafood message was introduced to all Coles seafood counters across Australia to make it easier for shoppers to identify a sustainable choice.
More Info
We are one of Australia’s leading retail businesses, with brands including Coles and Bi-Lo supermarkets, First Choice Liquor, Liquorland, Vintage Cellars, Spirit Hotels and Coles Express.
We employ over 100,000 team members and operate more than 2,200 outlets. Over 18 million transactions take place in our stores each week.
Our business goal is: ‘To give the people of Australia a shop they trust, delivering quality, service and value’.
As part of our ‘Australia First’ sourcing policy, we continued to support Australian farmers and produce. Some of our initiatives included replacing 7,000 tonnes a year of imported cheese as part of a new five year contract with Bega Cheese Limited, based in New South Wales, and launching a new brand of cheeses and milk, called ‘Great Ocean Road’, with Warrnambool Cheese and Butter.
Coles Community Food with SecondBite
In September 2011, we announced a national partnership with not-for-profit food rescue organisation, SecondBite, to donate surplus healthy fresh produce and bread to community food programs all over Australia. During the year, 208 stores joined ‘Coles Community Food with SecondBite’ and our donations represented more than 852,000 meals provided to people in need.
Plastic packaging trial
In September 2011, we expanded our in-store plastic bag recycling service with funding from the Australian Packaging Covenant to include plastic packaging as part of a trial in 114 Victorian supermarkets.
Between September 2011 and May 2012, more than 23.5 tonnes of soft plastic product packaging were returned to Coles by customers and saved from landfill. The waste will be turned into outdoor furniture and donated to schools and kindergartens.
Sow-stall free pork
During the year, we made good progress to deliver on our commitment to phase out sow-stall produced pork products. We have approved 19 farms to cater for our South Australian supermarkets and since March 2012, all fresh pork cuts supplied to our supermarkets in this state were sow-stall free.
Cage free eggs
We also finalised our ‘Egg Production Standard’, which defines our requirements for barn laid and free range eggs and have commenced auditing farms against this standard to meet our commitment to cease selling Coles brand cage eggs by 2013.
Of our team members, 93.7 per cent work in stores and 6.3 per cent in store support and logistics. Permanent team members now represent 66 per cent of our total workforce, compared to 59 per cent last year due to our strategy of offering permanent part-time positions in preference to hiring casual workers.
During the year, we continued to drive diversity in our business through the launch of our ‘First Step’ Indigenous employment and engagement programs in Sydney, Cairns (Queensland), Mirrabooka (Western Australia), Darwin and Canberra. Funding from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations is assisting us to provide 205 job opportunities in the coming year.
In 2010, an internal survey found that 262 team members identified themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and to date this has grown to 695. Further details about our Coles Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Plan
can be found on our website at www.coles .com.au/About-Coles/Community/Indigenous-Plan.aspx
This year, 800 team members completed our Supermarkets Retail Leaders program taking the total to more than 2,500 since it was launched in 2009. The program continues to be our key development program for team members looking to move into store management.
A Retail Leaders program for Coles Liquor commenced in January 2012 and 40 team members completed the program, which will continue in the coming year.
More than 2,800 team members and 1,900 store leaders were also trained in the ‘Coles Way’, which is designed to deliver high quality fresh produce for our customers and improved ways of working for our team members.
We also provided 125 apprentice-ships for butchers and bakers due to our new design stores offering customers cut meat upon request and in-store baked bread.
Our move to an integrated injury management system during the year has contributed to faster intervention and a greater focus on return to work, reducing our LTIs and new claims compared with last year.
Our LTIFR was 12.99 for the year, down 23 per cent on last year.
Significant improvements were seen in the injury rates for supermarkets, logistics and Coles Express, each achieving reductions of more than 25 per cent.
Following a national program of musculoskeletal assessments and upgrading back-of-house shelving and walkways, Coles Express had a 26 per cent decline in manual handling injuries.
Our logistics team achieved a significant reduction in its 2013 workers’ compensation premium as a result of a long-term and sustained approach to safety and claims management.
Water
This year, we estimated that our total water usage was 3,858 megalitres, 29.3 per cent higher than last year.
This increase can largely be attributed to a change in the methodology that has allowed us to improve our estimation of water used by our convenience stores and liquor stores.
The estimated water consumed by our supermarkets was 2.4 gigalitres, and during the year we installed smart meters in 119 supermarkets around Australia to better track, trend and report water consumption. Real-time data is collected via a website and any abnormal usage or leakage by a store can be immediately investigated.
Waste and recycling
This year our recycling rate improved to 60.5 per cent from 58.5 per cent, largely due to redirecting a higher volume of surplus food from our supermarkets to people in need.
Through our programs with SecondBite and Foodbank and organic recycling at 129 stores, we have diverted 7,446 tonnes of food waste from landfill.
We recycled 143,854 tonnes of cardboard, paper, plastic and metal and sent 98,902 tonnes of waste to landfill.
Plastic bag bans
Bans on the issue of single use light weight plastic bags in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory commenced in 2011. Coles offers these customers a range of alternative shopping bag options, including green reusable bags, chiller bags and reusable plastic bags.
Televisions and computers
The Product Stewardship (Televisions and Computers) Regulations 2011 have been introduced. Coles will participate in a co-regulatory arrangement with other Wesfarmers businesses to facilitate a consumer recycling program.
Cash for Containers
The Cash for Containers Scheme commenced across the Northern Territory on 3 January 2012. It is consistent with the South Australian approach, and we are working with our suppliers to ensure that all eligible beverage products sold by Coles have been approved under the Scheme and meet new labelling requirements.
Packaging improvements
Since assessing more than 1,800 Coles-branded products against the sustainable packaging guidelines, which are part of the Australian Packaging Covenant, we have improved and re-rated packaging for 55 products from red to green. For example, non-recyclable film on ‘Coles Smart Buy Sardines in Tomato Sauce’ was replaced with a recyclable board sleeve, making the product’s packaging completely recyclable. Recycling instructions have also been added to the packaging to make recycling easier for customers.
As part of relaunching Coles’ fresh organic range in 2012, packaging was reviewed to identify areas where excess packaging could be removed or more sustainable packaging materials could be used.
Environment protection and Coles Express
This year, Coles Express worked with Shell Australia and its contractors in New South Wales to implement the Vapour Recovery Regulation. The aim of the regulation is to reduce the amount of toxic and smog-forming pollutants released at service stations.
Biofuels
In 2011, our ethanol blended fuel (E10) was withdrawn from Coles Express sites in Queensland and Victoria due to supply constraints and state government mandates ceasing. We continue to supply E10 in New South Wales at 167 sites where the Biofuels Act 2007 imposes a mandate.
Carbon and energy
Our estimated total carbon emissions were 2,401,609 tonnes, which is five per cent lower than last year and equates to 70.4 tonnes of CO2e per million dollars of revenue, down 10.5 per cent on last year.
In preparation for the federal government’s Clean Energy Future legislative package, we have sought to mitigate our energy use and carbon emissions through a range of initiatives, including installing voltage optimisation technology in 182 stores during the year, which allows us to draw less energy from the public grid and reduce store power consumption.
We have also undertaken a range of research and development projects to identify future initiatives that will improve the efficiency of lighting, refrigeration and climate control at our stores. For example, we are combining our refrigeration and air conditioning plants into one system for new stores and refurbishments in the coming year, which, as well as lowering installation costs, is estimated to deliver a seven per cent saving in energy consumption.
Ethical sourcing
Each year, we undertake risk assessments in our supply chain and assess our suppliers against internationally recognised standards for ethical sourcing. This year, we audited 113 suppliers out of 214 operating in non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries. Of these audits, one critical non-conformance was identified which related to a Thai supplier. This was resolved swiftly and an action plan put into place to prevent reoccurrence.
During the year, evidence of unfair working conditions at a factory in Bangladesh was brought to our attention by a third party. This factory has been independently reaudited, and a corrective action plan put into place. No new orders have been placed with the factory by Coles.
Additionally, we request suppliers operating in low-risk regions to provide a self-assessment of their compliance with our ethical sourcing policy. During the year, 162 suppliers completed this self-assessment.
Fostering and supporting effective relationships with our many suppliers is a critical part of ensuring Coles remains a sustainable business. In particular, we are moving to many long-term supply contracts with suppliers, both growers and manufacturers in Australia, to provide confidence for investment and innovation. Two booklets, ‘Coles – Proudly Supporting Australian Made’ and ‘Coles – Backing Australian farmers and food companies’, are located on our website and provide further details of our relationships with our suppliers. In addition, Coles has a number of internal guidelines and standards concerning ethical behaviour for our employees who deal with suppliers.
Ingredients and labelling
Palm oil
In 2012, we surveyed Coles brand suppliers to determine how much palm oil is being used in our products. This will allow us to identify other products to be converted to using certified sustainable palm oil and meet our commitment to only use certified sustainable palm oil for Coles brand products by 2015.
Artificial colours, MSG and allergens
During the year, we removed artificial, colours and added monosodium glutamate (MSG) from all Coles brand food and drink products and improved our labelling of allergens to make it easier for customers who shop with food allergies in mind.
Nutritional labelling
We applied Daily Intake (DI) nutritional labelling to new packaging launched this year for Smart Buy products and in response to legislation being introduced in New South Wales in 2013, we introduced kilojoules labelling on display tickets for some ready-to-eat foods, such as deli salads and hot chickens.
Salt reduction
We are currently participating in industry-wide salt reduction programs. Since the start of the federal government’s food and health dialogue roundtables in 2010, we have avoided 40 tonnes of salt from being added to bread and more than 14 tonnes from being added to cereals.
Senate milk inquiry
The final report by the Senate Economics Reference Committee into the impacts of supermarket price decisions on the dairy industry was released in November 2011. In responding to the report, the federal government noted the findings of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in July 2011 that there was ‘no evidence that Coles acted in breach of the (Competition and Consumer) Act in relation to milk discounting’.
Tobacco
As part of a range of measures to reduce smoking rates in Australia, legislation to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products will start on 1 December 2012. To ensure the smooth implementation of plain packaging, we are reviewing a range of operational issues, including ticketing, service kiosk layouts and team member training.
During the year, Queensland was the final state in Australia to introduce a retail display ban on tobacco products. The ban requires us to ensure that all smoking products are not visible to customers.
Liquor and gaming
Coles operates 92 hotels and 81 gaming rooms. Most of these hotels are in Queensland, where we are required to own them under state legislation in order to retail liquor. We are committed to responsible gaming and service of alcohol and demonstrate this through compliance training programs for team members and working cooperatively with government and regulators to support harm minimisation measures where required.
Recent initiatives include:
Coles contributed $21.9 million to community programs and charities during the year, of which $2.9 million was via fundraising with customers, team members and suppliers and $19 million was our direct contribution in cash and in-kind.
During the year, approximately $10 million in sports equipment was distributed to more than 7,500 schools across Australia as part of our Sports for Schools program.
We continue to be the Cancer Council’s largest fundraising partner and in July to August 2011, our supermarkets and Coles Express stores raised more than $1.7 million for the Cancer Council Helpline (13 11 20), bringing our total since 1996 to over $11 million.
As well as supporting our national charity partners and programs during the year, Coles Indigenous Food Fund dispersed $180,000 to support suppliers and growers of bush foods during the year. As at 30 June 2012, more than 20 bush food products in the Coles Outback Spirit range sold through Coles supermarkets feature a donation to the Food Fund and this is expected to grow in the coming year.
Our business focuses on five key areas to improve our sustainability:
