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Cape Town - Serious Foods, which has a franchise agreement with Woolworths to run a Woolworths Food retail outlet in Pretoria, on Monday protested about Woolworths forcing it to charge prices that do not offer competition to other Woolworths' outlets.
Serious Foods complains that Woolworths is behaving anti-competitively by price-fixing by using centrally loaded prices automatically charged to customers at the point of sale.
A store owner does not have the ability to upload a different price on the system.
Serious Foods also says the franchise agreement required it to submit its advertising campaigns to Woolworths for approval.
Restricting advertising
While that in itself is not anti-competitive, the effect of an unreasonable refusal to permit advertising that suggests that its prices are lower than Woolworths-owned outlets is anti-competitive.
Serious Foods is looking for interim relief from the Competition Tribunal and has requested an urgent hearing to avoid suffering serious and irreparable harm.
Woolworths denies that it has been guilty of any unlawful conduct under the Competition Act. It is therefore opposing the application.
- I-Net Bridge