Expansion on cards for store in RMA row

A supermarket in Wairau Park which opened in May after years of planning wrangles could be extended because of its popularity, owners have said.

Foodstuffs tried for 20 years to open the Pak'N Save and the property has been cited by lawyers and politicians as an example of Resource Management Act problems.

Angela Bull, Foodstuff's general manager of property strategy, said community support for the North Shore supermarket had been strong and she acknowledged that in the longer-term an expansion was extremely likely.

"All options are open. We don't have a design finalised. The store is trading well and doing what we expected and we know that because we've had amazing community support. In the future, we might expand it but we don't have a timeframe. We're not going to say we'll never expand it," she said.

The supermarket was cited as a driver for overturning the Resource Management Act.

Law firm Chapman Tripp said improvements made to the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill had not obliterated the Government's attempts to stamp out anti-competitive use of the law.

"The radical trade competition sanctions have survived largely intact. These are intended to purge the RMA of the negative leveraging behaviour evident in high-profile examples such as Wairau Park Pak'N Save," the lawyers noted.

Foodstuffs' rival in New Zealand's supermarket duopoly, Progressive Enterprise, opposed the Shore store but said this was not for anti-competitive reasons. It wanted councils to abide by their own rules and stick to their district plans, it said.

Ms Bull said another supermarket had been her focus lately.

"We have other priorities right now, like trying to build a new supermarket in Te Awamutu. We were successful in the Court of Appeal against Progressive and the district council has just made a plan change operative. We're working on putting a resource consent application on that within the next month," she said.

The North Shore supermarket has only 13 checkouts, a move Ms Bull said was deliberate to try to restrict shopper visits.

"The 13 checkouts was designed as part of a throttling effect for the traffic," she said.