GCA warns Amazon it must comply with Groceries Supply Code of Practice

The Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) has told Amazon that it must take “swift and comprehensive” action to demonstrably comply with the Groceries Supply Code of Practice in its new 2024 annual survey. According to the GCA’s 2024 annual survey, while the number of suppliers experiencing a code issue fell from 36% to 33%, less than half of respondents directly supplying Amazon believed that it consistently or mostly complies with the code - as its compliance score fell from 59% to 47%. GCA stated that it is monitoring changes that Amazon is making and its impact on suppliers to determine whether they are sufficient. The results of the 11th annual survey, which received more than 3,000 responses, also revealed that there was a significant improvement in relation to cost price increases (CPIs). As food price inflation has fallen, the number of suppliers which requested at least one CPI from a retailer over the previous 12 months fell from 91% in 2023 to 67% in 2024. The number of suppliers highlighting a retailer’s response to a CPI as an issue also almost halved, falling from 28% in 2023 to 16%. Additionally, the report revealed that 21% of suppliers highlighted inadequate processes in place to enable invoice discrepancies to be resolved promptly, compared with 25% of suppliers in 2023. Meanwhile, 11% of suppliers highlighted data input errors not being resolved promptly, compared with 16% in 2023. The survey also included a question on cost price decreases (CPDs) for the first time; only 5% of suppliers highlighted concerns about how a CPD had been requested by a retailer. Overall compliance scores across the retailers ranged from 98% to 47% with an average compliance across all 14 retailers of 91% compared with 92% in 2023. Excluding Amazon, average compliance was 94% which was unchanged from the non-Amazon score in 2023. For the first time, Co-op came top of the 14 retailers for overall Code compliance with 98%. Co-op and Lidl both experienced a 2% improvement, which was the biggest percentage improvement across the 14 retailers. Retail Sector has contacted Amazon for comment.