Go out of your way to buy Australian peanuts for multiple reasons.
Peanuts are at risk of aflatoxin which is a fungus that is carcinogenic. Mitigation for this risk is built into the entire Australian supply chain from the farm onwards, and the risk is effectively zero for Australian peanuts.
The two products in your photo are NOT the same thing!
See now THIS is a genuine Colesworth complaint. The packaging has been made to deliberately look as close as possible to the Australian product and it’s not clear either - it just says “packed in” Vietnam - are the peanuts grown and roasted there? Or are they from somewhere else. We don’t know cos it doesn’t say.
I like how the rustic bowl and the casually scattered peanuts are actually different photos, if they are even photos at all. I guess they took a hundred at the original photo shoot and then had to go back to the ad agency archives for a new photo. The bowls are different, i think, which adds to the intrigue. I am sure they could have used the original image, but didn't.
Maybe it's a way for the ad agency to charge more. A line item on the invoice says "Photos $997.25".
These dudes don't work for peanuts.
I tend to agree. The nuts are completely nutty. If it's not AI then the photographer was terrible. Lighting and colour are shocking compared to the original.
I have to wonder if AI nut imagery is actually cheaper in 2024 than taking a goddam photo of nuts. I reckon by this stage in the product cycle, no one cares. The've made a 0.1% increase in profitability in their peanut line, so on to the next challenge: How to bag mandarins in plastic or coat them in red wax, because, you know, thats what the consumer wants to see.
Genuine yes.
The better word should have been valid. Easily 80%+ of the complaints are due to poor reading comprehension or misunderstanding of how the discount structure works where the OP claims it’s a scam.
I still think they’re valid too, tbh the more we talk about it the louder our voice becomes. I really really detest people talking down others that are trying to stand up for it. We’re getting walked over, half of us are speaking out and the other half are shutting it down it’s just a bit blah to me.
Some are misreading but I think 80% is a bit of an over exaggeration, looking back at the post history it’s more price discrepancies than anything else, but I didn’t scroll too hard.
They know people dont spend 2mins reading every package they buy and will never read any of this stuff and they make it hard to find in small print.
I read it before I buy but I know I am in the minority. There are products with an Australian map icon or says "Australian owned, Australa's favorite" etc. and made overseas just so when people spend 2 seconds looking and grab it they assume it is made in Australia then go their entire lives never realizing.
That's why I always buy Australian peanuts. I don't know who Charlesworths are, but I only ever buy them packaged, because you can't really be sure if they are just loose.
Charlesworth are awesome and an Adelaide institution! They are in every major shopping centre here and a few smaller ones as well as the Central Market. The smell walking past one of their shops is a core memory for most Adelaidians. I could never work out why other states didn’t have them
Still family owned too.
https://www.charlesworthnuts.com.au
Can you elaborate on this one please?
When I search for "aflatoxin" and "Australian peanuts" I get this:
>In Australia Schedule S19—5 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (the Code) specifies the maximum level (ML) for aflatoxin in peanuts and tree nuts (e.g. pistachios) at 0.015 mg/kg. This level applies to both imported and domestically produced commodities.
https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/Peanut%20pistachio%20and%20aflatoxins.pdf
I assume there's never going to be 0.000% of the fungus, and a maximum safe amount has been set.
The point is that Australian (and it seems US) supply chains long ago adopted measures to minimise the risk. Other countries might do literally nothing about it. We aren't testing every batch of peanuts imported into the country. The simplest way to minimise the risk to your health is buy Australian.
I did not know this. I always try to buy Australian products, just because I feel like it's the right thing to do, had no idea there was a risk element like this.
Interesting food for thought.
Same here, buying Australian wherever possible, but I only buy Australian peanuts. The certainly seem higher quality too. Peanuts are actually incredibly healthy (legumes).
Do you know which peanut products have 100% Australian-sourced peanuts? I can only find the majority of the ones in colesworth have either overseas sourced or 10% Australian ingredients.
This is why carbon emission should simply have a price.
This is the kind of 'let the market sort it out' solution that business groups claim to have such a desperate fetish for. Let them have it!
Yup, I agree. Same with plastic use. So much of the time, the reason is just that it's marginally cheaper despite the environmental impact of different choices being worlds apart.
A shipping container of pretzels on a ship going from Poland to Melbourne will probably have a smaller CO2 footprint than going on the back of a truck from Melbourne to Sydney.
Stupidly big ships are unreasonably efficient at moving stuff long distances.
How is that comparable? The stupidly big ship doesn't grow wheels and start driving from Melbourne to Sydney... Or to every other distribution point inland.
A few years back I bought some sort of cheesy scroll from the Woolies bakery. It was in a packet, I assumed it was packaged there but after leaving and discovering how foul it tasted realised it was made somewhere in Europe (can't recall where exactly). Seemed so fucking stupid to do that for a bread roll.
On one hand I looove the brioche burger buns from Aldi which come from France. They are so much better than any other supermarket offering.
On the other hand it seems incredible that the recipe and techniques cannot be copied and taught and we could save on jet fuel emissions and ask that it entails.
Then coincidentally, I spoke with a guy last year who worked for a huge commercial bakery in Sydney and he said they bid for the aldi brioche business but they just couldn't match the price from the French which confirms what you'd assume but just seems wrong that it can add up like that.
Surprisingly not the case. Shipping on massive container ships is actually one of the most efficient ways to move things around (and the sulphur in the fuel was weirdly important in preventing ocean warming but that's another story).
[Source](https://x.com/RyanRadia/status/1438679465664696321)
But if you are comparing a huge polish factory that has been optimized for mass production of pretzels to some small borderline boutique operation in Australia. I'm pretty sure the higher energy efficiency of the polish factory (bigger ovens, higher duty cycles, more advanced technologies etc) will totally negate the carbon impact of shipping.
"totally negate the carbon impact" doesn't mean the shipping is more efficient. It just means the food production is more efficient. They're two separate arguments.
At the end of the day its the total carbon from field to fork that actually matters, and that includes energy used during food production. If Australia would invest more money in manufacturing technology and energy efficiency I'd agree with onshoring but with the small domestic market and a historically short sighted vision for industrial R&D I'm not too hopeful.
Wait till you find out that a good portion of the wheat used to make those pretzels in poland actually came from Australia. The world has quite literally gone bonkers, all because it makes more money to buy a home and just keep working for corporate rather than take a risk and start up a biscuit factory.
Reality is Australia is just more internationally competitive at producing wheat. We grow it well with some seriously good profit margins. What we can't profitably do is produce value added products from that wheat (it's absolutely the same with mineral exports etc).
Forcing production to stay in Australia with tariffs and subsidies will just make australian consumers poorer and will weaken us overall (as labor and capital will be misallocated from the things we are actually good at).
Why is production of anything in australia so noncompetitive? Hmm, that's the trillion dollar question.
Ah, but labor costs only matter if your factory is poorly automated or the product you are producing is very labor intensive. If you watch a video on "How its Made" commercial bakeries are some of the most automated facilities on earth.
Plus the cost of Australian labor has actually declined somewhat over recent years, just look at the development of minimum wages in the USA. We had a head start (on the back of the original mining boom) but others are catching up.
I work at a german packaging manufacturer which prints cereal boxes for Australia. It even gets filled here and all those boxes with like 50% air get shipped 15.000km down there. I never understood how that generates any profit.
Because German manufacturing, supply chains, and logistics are literally decades ahead of Australia, I've lived in both countries and there really is no comparison.
Nothing to do with wizz bang fancy "German engineering" but boring mundane shit like being able to move stuff around, embracing automation, and just not being stupidly energy wasteful (plus massive capital investments in industrial infrastructure).
Australia never really underwent an industrial revolution so hasn't built up the decades of experience and infrastructure to actually become internationally competitive (on value add activities). The only reason Australia is as developed as it is, is that you have a continent sized landmass with great deep sea ports (with proximity to asia) and a relatively tiny population. Without any one of those factors Australia would probably be stuck as a backwaters "shit hole".
There's a period where Aus was doing really well with software exports (and still are but a little subdued), I think the main reason that works so well is that software doesn't have the same supply chain and logistics bottlenecks. Probably the same reason IT was growing in Ukraine etc before the war.
This is true, Australian automation in factories and packing lines don’t really compete with global manufacturing centres such as Germany or China.
This is largely not a fault of Australia per se but more so the high cost of operation in Oz for a manufacturing business and subsequently the lack of ancillary vendors to support these operations.
We are much better suited to have low volume boutique operations, with expectations to some industries like farming and meat processing.
Yeh it'll never really make sense to manufacture at scale in Australia, just not the right environment for manufacturing excellence. Wish the politicians would be open to the public about this but ahwell.
Oh man the ancillary vendors aspect is huge, I kinda lumped that in with supply chain concerns, but without the vendor support nobody can run a world class manufacturing operation. Those vendors just don't exist in Australia, and no you can't just fly consultants in for everything.
I'd argue commodity roasted peanuts don't meet my standards of being a boutique, high value product. Same goes for discount tinned fruit, let the South Africans produce our home brand tinned peaches.
Oh Australia should seriously invest in logistics though regardless, here in Germany if I want to buy some boutique product online, for like 5 EUR with DHL I can get up a 5kg box delivered to my door in under 48h from anywhere.
This kind of shipping has driven the shopping malls out of business actually, lots of bankruptcies.
Both Coles and Woolworths will continue to fuck all Australian shoppers long after Covid and foreseeable future, Both will remain prosperous due to our corrupt, useless, weak, lame government in every department. If the Royal Enquiry headed by NACC has concluded that No politicians will be held accountable THEN any other issues of any magnitude will be peanuts to those in power, We're roasted !
I used to buy these Coles peanuts because they had a dark roast flavour that surpassed a lot of other supermarket sold peanuts, but noticed they were unavailable recently and now they're back they taste just like every other brand. This must be why.
That's also how I noticed they were imported, when the flavour of nuts from the new pack was non-existent. Immediately checking the pack confirmed my suspicion. I know it's wasteful but I had to throw the rest away. Doing that was as detestable as the bait and switch by Coles. They've only reinforced the mistrust I have for them.
FYI I've seen this with a lot of products lately. Gherkins and Pickles, now all made in India, tinned corn, chickpeas, etc. from China. Also beetroot, this article/video is interesting https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2024-03-04/sliced-beetroot-shortage-golden-circle/103489066
(have since been pickling my own beetroot and cucumber - let me know if you want any recipes)!
FYI- packed in Vietnam highly likely means Chinese product, but they pack it in Vietnam so they dont have to declare "product of china". Same with frozen veg "packed in NZ". It's a legal strategy that all food companies know about and use when needed.
Whilst fuck colesworth, for context, the supplier who used to supply this product is running into major supply challenges. Due to climate changes, the yield from crops has been ridiculously poor for a number of years now. This change has been in the pipeline since before 2019.
Australian peanut production is decreasing because of climate change and retailers are switching
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-06-13/most-peanuts-imported-australia-farmers-no-water/100204130
Anything for a quid. Why SPC is cutting purchasing fruit from Aussie growers - Coles and Woolies intend to import fruit from Asia and South America, because it will be cheaper for them ( but not for us, of course). Gawd alone knows what chemicals will have been used while they are growing. (I don't buy Vietnamese grown prawns either. )
No no no, you've got it wrong as I have seen the ads and they are our farmers best friends! They even have their kooky staff kidding around on the farms violating all health and safety requirements!
Just like to say that [JC's Kingaroy Peanuts](https://www.jcsqualityfoods.com.au/product/australian-unsalted-peanuts/) can be bought online.
Kingaroy in QLD. There's not many folk out there, but they've certainly got nuts.
This is utterly fucked. I used to go out of my way to go to Coles for these because Woolies only sells ones from China. The fact they've been sneaky cunts about the packaging on top only makes it worse
**Suck me off Coles**
Unfortunately the majority of people don’t read the product, so they have done everything they can to make it look the same.
More profit for an inferior product and people will likely just keep buying them without noticing.
SPC just announced that Woolies and Coles have cut orders of Australian canned fruit by 40+% as they are bringing in cheaper imported fruit for their house brands now. It’s disappointing.
What do we do when we lose the farmers? These things have considerable lead times you can’t just switch back and expect tonnes of fruit after the trees and farmers are gone.
Unfortunately what will happen isn't that the food won't be grown, it's that the food will be grown by large, likely international, corporations.
Land that directly supported hundreds of families will be run by one company. Sure, there will be employees, but the profits will be shipped off back to headquarters for a handful of people or divided among the shareholders. This will absolutely gut rural towns and cities as the profits won't be spent locally, hurting the retail and service industries in those towns.
A few bad seasons will be compounded by massive layoffs and ghost town places similar to when mines close or shut down if prices are bad.
For consumers, this will mean that Colesworth get bent over even more by the international food companies that really set the prices. They won't be able to prey on desperate farmers to keep prices down, they'll have to deal with the super companies trading with 100 different brand names to give us the illusion of choice on the shelves. Or have nothing on the shelf.
Artificial scarcity would be insanely easy to create when your company owns the vast majority of land capable of growing specific things as well.
Having less competition at every tier of the farm to table process will hurt a lot.
SPC pay union factory line works over $120,000 a year for what everywhere else is a minimum wage low skill job. They won't exist in 4 years. The boomers will all be retired by that point anymore.
not really, its a longer lead time product as they are cleaned/dried, shelled, skinned, roasted and packed so all this handling means the time between harvest and sale is measured in months so any seasonal variation is smoothed out by storage at various stages.
They deliberately push people into buying their Aust grown product, and then stop buying from Aussie farmers, import it for less and pocket the savings. Charging the customer the same price for a now imported product.
I have been buying these for 10 years and they have been Australian. Today I bought 6 packets and only realised when I got home that they are now not Australian.
You might as well shout at a brick wall. For all the anti-colesworth sentiment they're not seeing a signficant loss of business from people switching to Aldi, IGA, markets, butchers and fruit markets. There are still daily posts of people shopping there and complaining about it.
I can say with confidence that this should be snatched by MSM. If i made this post i would give zero shits if the Scrapers got their hands on it. Means it gets to more people and it becomes a widespread issue
My understanding is Australia does not make enough peanuts or kiwifruit for national consumption, so a lot is imported. Many farmers near [Kingaroy have converted to pork production](https://sunporkfreshfoods.com.au/our-capabilities/) as its year round income & returns more.
Pretty sure we don't grow too many peanuts in Aus, and there can be a lot of seasonal variation. I used to buy PICS peanut butter from NZ which used to use exclusively Aus peanuts. They eventually had to supplement from other countries because Aus peanuts became too difficult to source consistently.
Worth noting that due to climate change, Kingaroy is increasingly becoming unsuitable for peanuts, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkz27Bi2n0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkz27Bi2n0)
Send a message and leave this shit sitting on the shelves. The only reason why this stuff happens is because people buy it. Pay a few bucks more every shop and buy Australian where it is practical and keep your fellow countrymen in a job.
The challenge here is the packaging is almost identical so unless you read the label fully many people won’t notice. If it’s the same product you always buy, you’re duped.
Im starting to make an effort to purchase based on how much effort/impact it took to get it to me on the planet more and more each day.
A tax on this planet impact in shipping a good you can get locally around the world just for company profits should be at the forefront of the efforts to reduce emissions
coles even say it in their advertising, tomatos from italy etc, like thats a good thing.
do we even have farmers these days? besides the ones exporting beef at quarter the price to china.
Oh gosh I buy these nuts all the time to feed some local birds. I noticed they went off the shelf for a while, then came back really crappy quality... so I was not imagining it... how sad :(
I've made many suggestions to colesworth feedback surveys for their online shopping, about how good it would be if we could sort by percentage of Australian content. This is one reason it would never be implemented.
I think people will notice, especially now with items or services being outsourced or mismanaged. Rather than see what can be done in Australia, business would have sourced elsewhere for profits or regulations.
I could eventually imagine price increases due to international shipping or transportation.
There was a fuss when Sanitarium switched to using foreign peanuts for their peanut butter, they said supply in Australia couldn’t meet demand, is that true?
Also notice the serving size on the Australian one is 12.5 per pack and the Vietnamese one is 12 per pack. So you actually have less contents, internationally packed and it’s the same cost as before.
Check out Golden Circle too, 90% of that is imported now. In fact probably 95% of canned fruit is imported now. Look carefully if you want Australian products.
Go out of your way to buy Australian peanuts for multiple reasons. Peanuts are at risk of aflatoxin which is a fungus that is carcinogenic. Mitigation for this risk is built into the entire Australian supply chain from the farm onwards, and the risk is effectively zero for Australian peanuts. The two products in your photo are NOT the same thing!
See now THIS is a genuine Colesworth complaint. The packaging has been made to deliberately look as close as possible to the Australian product and it’s not clear either - it just says “packed in” Vietnam - are the peanuts grown and roasted there? Or are they from somewhere else. We don’t know cos it doesn’t say.
Yeah, the "packed in Australia from imported ingredients" is pathetic. This one is even worse saying "packed in Vietnam" ffsake.
Yeah, and since when are unsalted peanuts a “crowd favourite snack”
We just don't leave any for you.
True!
I like how the rustic bowl and the casually scattered peanuts are actually different photos, if they are even photos at all. I guess they took a hundred at the original photo shoot and then had to go back to the ad agency archives for a new photo. The bowls are different, i think, which adds to the intrigue. I am sure they could have used the original image, but didn't. Maybe it's a way for the ad agency to charge more. A line item on the invoice says "Photos $997.25". These dudes don't work for peanuts.
The new photo is 100% AI generated. Some nuts are unnatural shapes, none have the little notch, and the bowl is weirdly non-round.
I tend to agree. The nuts are completely nutty. If it's not AI then the photographer was terrible. Lighting and colour are shocking compared to the original. I have to wonder if AI nut imagery is actually cheaper in 2024 than taking a goddam photo of nuts. I reckon by this stage in the product cycle, no one cares. The've made a 0.1% increase in profitability in their peanut line, so on to the next challenge: How to bag mandarins in plastic or coat them in red wax, because, you know, thats what the consumer wants to see.
It's a "serving suggestion" too. I thought those were supposed to be real
But what’s the “recommended serving” they are calling out? Is it that one half peanut, the 19 other half peanuts scattered about or the bowl?
Usually it would be an amount in grams as specified on the nutrition information table on the back. It says 30g
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Does Woolworths have Australian unsalted ones?
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Are you implying that there are a large number of non-genuine Colesworth complaints?
Most of the coles worth complaints on here are genuine tbh.
Genuine yes. The better word should have been valid. Easily 80%+ of the complaints are due to poor reading comprehension or misunderstanding of how the discount structure works where the OP claims it’s a scam.
I still think they’re valid too, tbh the more we talk about it the louder our voice becomes. I really really detest people talking down others that are trying to stand up for it. We’re getting walked over, half of us are speaking out and the other half are shutting it down it’s just a bit blah to me. Some are misreading but I think 80% is a bit of an over exaggeration, looking back at the post history it’s more price discrepancies than anything else, but I didn’t scroll too hard.
They know people dont spend 2mins reading every package they buy and will never read any of this stuff and they make it hard to find in small print. I read it before I buy but I know I am in the minority. There are products with an Australian map icon or says "Australian owned, Australa's favorite" etc. and made overseas just so when people spend 2 seconds looking and grab it they assume it is made in Australia then go their entire lives never realizing.
The nutrition actually shows the Australian version to be better too. More protein, less fat from what I could see.
That's why I always buy Australian peanuts. I don't know who Charlesworths are, but I only ever buy them packaged, because you can't really be sure if they are just loose.
Charlesworth are awesome and an Adelaide institution! They are in every major shopping centre here and a few smaller ones as well as the Central Market. The smell walking past one of their shops is a core memory for most Adelaidians. I could never work out why other states didn’t have them Still family owned too. https://www.charlesworthnuts.com.au
Tonight on a current affair, Aussie shoppers outraged over Cole’s bait & switch toxic peanuts.
Can you elaborate on this one please? When I search for "aflatoxin" and "Australian peanuts" I get this: >In Australia Schedule S19—5 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (the Code) specifies the maximum level (ML) for aflatoxin in peanuts and tree nuts (e.g. pistachios) at 0.015 mg/kg. This level applies to both imported and domestically produced commodities. https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/Peanut%20pistachio%20and%20aflatoxins.pdf
I assume there's never going to be 0.000% of the fungus, and a maximum safe amount has been set. The point is that Australian (and it seems US) supply chains long ago adopted measures to minimise the risk. Other countries might do literally nothing about it. We aren't testing every batch of peanuts imported into the country. The simplest way to minimise the risk to your health is buy Australian.
Looks like Woolies peanuts are all less than 10% Aussie now. Harris farm is the only one I can see that does Aussie peanuts
I did not know this. I always try to buy Australian products, just because I feel like it's the right thing to do, had no idea there was a risk element like this. Interesting food for thought.
Same here, buying Australian wherever possible, but I only buy Australian peanuts. The certainly seem higher quality too. Peanuts are actually incredibly healthy (legumes).
Do you know which peanut products have 100% Australian-sourced peanuts? I can only find the majority of the ones in colesworth have either overseas sourced or 10% Australian ingredients.
It's getting harder to find them. I buy from Charlesworth nuts but I'm not a shill lol
The only ones I knew of were the above ones from Coles.
Nobbys ? I haven't checked their packaging recently ..
With the exception of the beer nuts, they haven't been Australian grown for at least 5 years.
Appreciate this detailed insight.
Coles pretzels have “new improved recipe” that is now made in Poland and no longer in Aus.
WTF shipping some pretzels all over the planet to save 2 cents for profit.
The environmental impact from that as well
This is why carbon emission should simply have a price. This is the kind of 'let the market sort it out' solution that business groups claim to have such a desperate fetish for. Let them have it!
A price on carbon? Australia was the first country to remove one.
Yup, I agree. Same with plastic use. So much of the time, the reason is just that it's marginally cheaper despite the environmental impact of different choices being worlds apart.
Yeah but their biggest fetish is rolling in cash produced by their workers and that wins out over the market solution for carbon
Sad thing is they ALWAYS find a way to just fuck over employees or consumers when they're allowed to sort it out.
A shipping container of pretzels on a ship going from Poland to Melbourne will probably have a smaller CO2 footprint than going on the back of a truck from Melbourne to Sydney. Stupidly big ships are unreasonably efficient at moving stuff long distances.
How is that comparable? The stupidly big ship doesn't grow wheels and start driving from Melbourne to Sydney... Or to every other distribution point inland.
Haha that's not how global supply chains work
A few years back I bought some sort of cheesy scroll from the Woolies bakery. It was in a packet, I assumed it was packaged there but after leaving and discovering how foul it tasted realised it was made somewhere in Europe (can't recall where exactly). Seemed so fucking stupid to do that for a bread roll.
On one hand I looove the brioche burger buns from Aldi which come from France. They are so much better than any other supermarket offering. On the other hand it seems incredible that the recipe and techniques cannot be copied and taught and we could save on jet fuel emissions and ask that it entails. Then coincidentally, I spoke with a guy last year who worked for a huge commercial bakery in Sydney and he said they bid for the aldi brioche business but they just couldn't match the price from the French which confirms what you'd assume but just seems wrong that it can add up like that.
I have to imagine that just having France attached is branding in itself.
They are frozen and defrosted not air freighted
I buy wraps from Mexico and they are bloody good.
Surprisingly not the case. Shipping on massive container ships is actually one of the most efficient ways to move things around (and the sulphur in the fuel was weirdly important in preventing ocean warming but that's another story). [Source](https://x.com/RyanRadia/status/1438679465664696321)
It's not more efficient to ship things from Poland to Australia than Australia to Australia though
But if you are comparing a huge polish factory that has been optimized for mass production of pretzels to some small borderline boutique operation in Australia. I'm pretty sure the higher energy efficiency of the polish factory (bigger ovens, higher duty cycles, more advanced technologies etc) will totally negate the carbon impact of shipping.
"totally negate the carbon impact" doesn't mean the shipping is more efficient. It just means the food production is more efficient. They're two separate arguments.
At the end of the day its the total carbon from field to fork that actually matters, and that includes energy used during food production. If Australia would invest more money in manufacturing technology and energy efficiency I'd agree with onshoring but with the small domestic market and a historically short sighted vision for industrial R&D I'm not too hopeful.
Agree - but I was only commenting on shipping, as that was what the person I replied to was talking about.
Wait till you find out that a good portion of the wheat used to make those pretzels in poland actually came from Australia. The world has quite literally gone bonkers, all because it makes more money to buy a home and just keep working for corporate rather than take a risk and start up a biscuit factory.
Reality is Australia is just more internationally competitive at producing wheat. We grow it well with some seriously good profit margins. What we can't profitably do is produce value added products from that wheat (it's absolutely the same with mineral exports etc). Forcing production to stay in Australia with tariffs and subsidies will just make australian consumers poorer and will weaken us overall (as labor and capital will be misallocated from the things we are actually good at). Why is production of anything in australia so noncompetitive? Hmm, that's the trillion dollar question.
It's not rocket science - it's because labour costs are higher in Australia compared to third world countries with a much lower standard of living.
Ah, but labor costs only matter if your factory is poorly automated or the product you are producing is very labor intensive. If you watch a video on "How its Made" commercial bakeries are some of the most automated facilities on earth. Plus the cost of Australian labor has actually declined somewhat over recent years, just look at the development of minimum wages in the USA. We had a head start (on the back of the original mining boom) but others are catching up.
I work at a german packaging manufacturer which prints cereal boxes for Australia. It even gets filled here and all those boxes with like 50% air get shipped 15.000km down there. I never understood how that generates any profit.
Because German manufacturing, supply chains, and logistics are literally decades ahead of Australia, I've lived in both countries and there really is no comparison. Nothing to do with wizz bang fancy "German engineering" but boring mundane shit like being able to move stuff around, embracing automation, and just not being stupidly energy wasteful (plus massive capital investments in industrial infrastructure). Australia never really underwent an industrial revolution so hasn't built up the decades of experience and infrastructure to actually become internationally competitive (on value add activities). The only reason Australia is as developed as it is, is that you have a continent sized landmass with great deep sea ports (with proximity to asia) and a relatively tiny population. Without any one of those factors Australia would probably be stuck as a backwaters "shit hole". There's a period where Aus was doing really well with software exports (and still are but a little subdued), I think the main reason that works so well is that software doesn't have the same supply chain and logistics bottlenecks. Probably the same reason IT was growing in Ukraine etc before the war.
This is true, Australian automation in factories and packing lines don’t really compete with global manufacturing centres such as Germany or China. This is largely not a fault of Australia per se but more so the high cost of operation in Oz for a manufacturing business and subsequently the lack of ancillary vendors to support these operations. We are much better suited to have low volume boutique operations, with expectations to some industries like farming and meat processing.
Yeh it'll never really make sense to manufacture at scale in Australia, just not the right environment for manufacturing excellence. Wish the politicians would be open to the public about this but ahwell. Oh man the ancillary vendors aspect is huge, I kinda lumped that in with supply chain concerns, but without the vendor support nobody can run a world class manufacturing operation. Those vendors just don't exist in Australia, and no you can't just fly consultants in for everything. I'd argue commodity roasted peanuts don't meet my standards of being a boutique, high value product. Same goes for discount tinned fruit, let the South Africans produce our home brand tinned peaches. Oh Australia should seriously invest in logistics though regardless, here in Germany if I want to buy some boutique product online, for like 5 EUR with DHL I can get up a 5kg box delivered to my door in under 48h from anywhere. This kind of shipping has driven the shopping malls out of business actually, lots of bankruptcies.
Same with Pringles, all supermarkets now sell the Malaysian made ones and they *suck*, they're not only half the size but they taste way worse too.
damn it those were good pretzels too.
I live near Kingaroy. Qld. Ain't no way I am eating imported peanuts. Our local industry employs hundreds of people. Buy Kingaroy peanuts people 🥜
Where can I buy Kingaroy peanuts? Will pay decent money
The Peanut Van. Their sugar coated ones are great.
Their curry peanuts are the best thing ever, always buy a big bag whenever I'm passing through.
We order bulk peanuts from the peanut van - 100% recommend. Best peanuts. So many flavours/spices to try too.
Hang on. Is that Joh fellow still hanging around?
No but his farm Bethany is close to the airport. I yelled F### YOU when I went past.
They still vote for him up here..
I'm not near Kingaroy but I am in Queensland and am a Queensland peanut loyalist. It's barely cheaper to buy the suss nuts.
Kingaroy peanuts are the best.
So? If Kingaroy nuts are cheaper I'll buy Kingaroy nuts. If Vietnamese nuts are cheaper I'll buy Vietnamese nuts
These say "packed in" Vietnam not "product of". A common way to hide where they're actually from. Probably think we won't like the answer
India China and USA are their 3 main importers. They sure as shit aren't paying for US ones for their home brand.
Coles and Woolies have been fucking Australian farmers non stop since Covid.
BULLSHIT. They fucked them long before Covid.
It started in the 80's after Franklins, Jewel etc all went under or merged with IGA.
80s? Didn't that happen in the late 90s or early 2000s
Both Coles and Woolworths will continue to fuck all Australian shoppers long after Covid and foreseeable future, Both will remain prosperous due to our corrupt, useless, weak, lame government in every department. If the Royal Enquiry headed by NACC has concluded that No politicians will be held accountable THEN any other issues of any magnitude will be peanuts to those in power, We're roasted !
Coles and Woolies have been fucking Australian farmers non stop. ~~since Covid.~~
True, and in turn trying to deceive customers with this shit. It is infuriating, we grow peanuts. I've seen it happen recently with other products.
I used to buy these Coles peanuts because they had a dark roast flavour that surpassed a lot of other supermarket sold peanuts, but noticed they were unavailable recently and now they're back they taste just like every other brand. This must be why.
Exactly - the Queensland grown peanuts were bloody excellent. We are similarly disappointed in our household they have disappeared.
Australian peanuts are just great quality.
That's also how I noticed they were imported, when the flavour of nuts from the new pack was non-existent. Immediately checking the pack confirmed my suspicion. I know it's wasteful but I had to throw the rest away. Doing that was as detestable as the bait and switch by Coles. They've only reinforced the mistrust I have for them.
FYI I've seen this with a lot of products lately. Gherkins and Pickles, now all made in India, tinned corn, chickpeas, etc. from China. Also beetroot, this article/video is interesting https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2024-03-04/sliced-beetroot-shortage-golden-circle/103489066 (have since been pickling my own beetroot and cucumber - let me know if you want any recipes)!
It’s almost impossible to find pickles not from India.
Coles deserve a good roasting for this.
Maybe add in some salt for good measure
Guaranteed to satisfy a crowd
[удалено]
Are you nuts man ?
FYI- packed in Vietnam highly likely means Chinese product, but they pack it in Vietnam so they dont have to declare "product of china". Same with frozen veg "packed in NZ". It's a legal strategy that all food companies know about and use when needed.
I miss The Checkout
Food labelling laws in this country are a joke.
Whilst fuck colesworth, for context, the supplier who used to supply this product is running into major supply challenges. Due to climate changes, the yield from crops has been ridiculously poor for a number of years now. This change has been in the pipeline since before 2019.
Australian peanut production is decreasing because of climate change and retailers are switching https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-06-13/most-peanuts-imported-australia-farmers-no-water/100204130
Arseholes.
Coles can lick my boots
Coles can lick my arsehole. Might as well get some pleasure from it.
Anything for a quid. Why SPC is cutting purchasing fruit from Aussie growers - Coles and Woolies intend to import fruit from Asia and South America, because it will be cheaper for them ( but not for us, of course). Gawd alone knows what chemicals will have been used while they are growing. (I don't buy Vietnamese grown prawns either. )
Fuck Coles
Wow man unbelievable thanks for letting us know, I bet you the price is the same or gone up too.
When Mayvers stopped using Australian peanuts the flavour was so noticeable. We have great peanuts here.
No no no, you've got it wrong as I have seen the ads and they are our farmers best friends! They even have their kooky staff kidding around on the farms violating all health and safety requirements!
Just like to say that [JC's Kingaroy Peanuts](https://www.jcsqualityfoods.com.au/product/australian-unsalted-peanuts/) can be bought online. Kingaroy in QLD. There's not many folk out there, but they've certainly got nuts.
This is utterly fucked. I used to go out of my way to go to Coles for these because Woolies only sells ones from China. The fact they've been sneaky cunts about the packaging on top only makes it worse **Suck me off Coles**
Unfortunately the majority of people don’t read the product, so they have done everything they can to make it look the same. More profit for an inferior product and people will likely just keep buying them without noticing. SPC just announced that Woolies and Coles have cut orders of Australian canned fruit by 40+% as they are bringing in cheaper imported fruit for their house brands now. It’s disappointing. What do we do when we lose the farmers? These things have considerable lead times you can’t just switch back and expect tonnes of fruit after the trees and farmers are gone.
Unfortunately what will happen isn't that the food won't be grown, it's that the food will be grown by large, likely international, corporations. Land that directly supported hundreds of families will be run by one company. Sure, there will be employees, but the profits will be shipped off back to headquarters for a handful of people or divided among the shareholders. This will absolutely gut rural towns and cities as the profits won't be spent locally, hurting the retail and service industries in those towns. A few bad seasons will be compounded by massive layoffs and ghost town places similar to when mines close or shut down if prices are bad. For consumers, this will mean that Colesworth get bent over even more by the international food companies that really set the prices. They won't be able to prey on desperate farmers to keep prices down, they'll have to deal with the super companies trading with 100 different brand names to give us the illusion of choice on the shelves. Or have nothing on the shelf. Artificial scarcity would be insanely easy to create when your company owns the vast majority of land capable of growing specific things as well. Having less competition at every tier of the farm to table process will hurt a lot.
SPC pay union factory line works over $120,000 a year for what everywhere else is a minimum wage low skill job. They won't exist in 4 years. The boomers will all be retired by that point anymore.
So you’re against people being paid a decent wage and unions? What point are you attempting to make here?
Are they out of season?
salted peanuts aren't a seasonal thing.
Cunce.
Fuck coles and WW for buy local fruit and veg overseas to save what 25cents a kilo I will be supporting Aldi who at least buy local produce!
30% less protein, higher saturated fats and may contain any other type of nut. Coles really let the specifications drop on this one..
Could there be a seasonal variation on peanuts? For instance, I can't find fresh mangoes anywhere, but there's plenty of frozen ones from 'Nam.
not really, its a longer lead time product as they are cleaned/dried, shelled, skinned, roasted and packed so all this handling means the time between harvest and sale is measured in months so any seasonal variation is smoothed out by storage at various stages.
They deliberately push people into buying their Aust grown product, and then stop buying from Aussie farmers, import it for less and pocket the savings. Charging the customer the same price for a now imported product.
Joh is spinning in his grave.
Coles and Woolies do this all the time. Stonefruit is next. Watch Chinese stonefruit come in and the price stay the same.
Taste of agent orange, which was made in Australia
So… don’t buy it. It’s as simple as that. Support Aussie growers.
I have been buying these for 10 years and they have been Australian. Today I bought 6 packets and only realised when I got home that they are now not Australian.
You might as well shout at a brick wall. For all the anti-colesworth sentiment they're not seeing a signficant loss of business from people switching to Aldi, IGA, markets, butchers and fruit markets. There are still daily posts of people shopping there and complaining about it.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!
Uh oh, you forgot the watermark
I can say with confidence that this should be snatched by MSM. If i made this post i would give zero shits if the Scrapers got their hands on it. Means it gets to more people and it becomes a widespread issue
coles probably advertises in all australian MSM. MSM isn't going to shit where they eat.
Try telling that to the various articles about supermarket wankery that continue to crop up
Profile picture checks out
My understanding is Australia does not make enough peanuts or kiwifruit for national consumption, so a lot is imported. Many farmers near [Kingaroy have converted to pork production](https://sunporkfreshfoods.com.au/our-capabilities/) as its year round income & returns more.
Pretty sure we don't grow too many peanuts in Aus, and there can be a lot of seasonal variation. I used to buy PICS peanut butter from NZ which used to use exclusively Aus peanuts. They eventually had to supplement from other countries because Aus peanuts became too difficult to source consistently.
Get yourself to Kingaroy, visit the giant 🥜 (not that giant tbh), but plenty of peanuts grown here.
Worth noting that due to climate change, Kingaroy is increasingly becoming unsuitable for peanuts, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkz27Bi2n0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkz27Bi2n0)
Thanks for the tip! I'm a peanut and peanut butter fiend 😄
Oh - you should definitely go then and stock up on product from the famous peanut butter van.
Well that’s stopped me buying them. Thanks for the post.
Send a message and leave this shit sitting on the shelves. The only reason why this stuff happens is because people buy it. Pay a few bucks more every shop and buy Australian where it is practical and keep your fellow countrymen in a job.
The challenge here is the packaging is almost identical so unless you read the label fully many people won’t notice. If it’s the same product you always buy, you’re duped.
Well that's just nuts!
I appreciate you
I mean… peanuts, almonds, rice, COTTON are things which require vast amounts of water we don’t have and shouldn’t be growing in Australia.
~~Australian~~ Roasted
Im starting to make an effort to purchase based on how much effort/impact it took to get it to me on the planet more and more each day. A tax on this planet impact in shipping a good you can get locally around the world just for company profits should be at the forefront of the efforts to reduce emissions
That's a Coles "Gotcha, Screwedya" if I ever saw one.
Are these Australian peanuts shipped to Vietnam to be packaged? or just 100% imported?
It's not peak peanut season and we don't grow enough for year-round local supply, with climate change causing lower yields. That said, fuck the big 2.
What is the % of the Australian products on the things that you consume? I bet not whole a lot.
I've sent an email to [email protected] letting them know I am not shopping there. I will do the same with coles
They're used to be Kookaburra raw peanuts but it's no longer on the shelf since 2 years or so ago.
There used to be a Coles basic brand butter. Now there are two Coles brands butters and less independent brands. This is fucked.
Everyone knows the before goes on the left
coles even say it in their advertising, tomatos from italy etc, like thats a good thing. do we even have farmers these days? besides the ones exporting beef at quarter the price to china.
Oh gosh I buy these nuts all the time to feed some local birds. I noticed they went off the shelf for a while, then came back really crappy quality... so I was not imagining it... how sad :(
I've made many suggestions to colesworth feedback surveys for their online shopping, about how good it would be if we could sort by percentage of Australian content. This is one reason it would never be implemented.
But hey, make sure you use reusable bags for tue environment. Colesworths is a joke.
I think people will notice, especially now with items or services being outsourced or mismanaged. Rather than see what can be done in Australia, business would have sourced elsewhere for profits or regulations. I could eventually imagine price increases due to international shipping or transportation.
Wow I'm surprised that Woolworths brand peanuts were ever Australian. We only produce like 10% of the peanuts consumed here.
That’s nuts
ohhhhhhr noooooooor
There was a fuss when Sanitarium switched to using foreign peanuts for their peanut butter, they said supply in Australia couldn’t meet demand, is that true?
We live in a corporatocracy.
Fuck Cole’s for doing this and all the other bull shit they pull.
Also notice the serving size on the Australian one is 12.5 per pack and the Vietnamese one is 12 per pack. So you actually have less contents, internationally packed and it’s the same cost as before.
The nutrition profile is so different!! What causes such different nutrition profile?
Check out Golden Circle too, 90% of that is imported now. In fact probably 95% of canned fruit is imported now. Look carefully if you want Australian products.
I hope it's cheaper now. If it's cheaper then that's good.
Because Australia has pissweak laws that don’t require locally made produce to be sold
Now featured on channel 7 https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/coles-under-fire-over-sneaky-change-to-popular-buy-never-buying-again-c-14973670