News and media releases

Palmerston North will soon be home to a brand new, purpose-built distribution hub on Alderson Road, servicing Countdown’s stores from Gisborne to Wellington.  Construction starts on the new state-of-the-art building over the next few weeks.  

As the country celebrates the move to Level 1 today, Countdown will no longer be limiting the number of customers in its stores and will open all SCOs and service checkouts as required.

Countdown has launched a brand new Food for Good Foundation, with an immediate $1 million donation to food welfare and food rescue charities around the country, and a further $500,000 in financial support for Countdown’s food rescue partners in the July-June financial year ahead.  The Foundation also expects to raise a further $1 million this year for hunger relief together with Countdown customers, through its regular community fundraising and food appeals.

Countdown has today announced that it is awarding Woolworths Group shares to its eligible team members, providing 14,400 Kiwis across its 183 stores and distribution centres with an ownership stake in the company.

Life under lockdown looked similar for most Kiwis, but the way we shopped at the supermarket divided the nation amongst old and young.

Countdown’s brand new Rototuna supermarket has officially opened to the public today, after initially serving as an online-only store to keep up with the demand for online orders throughout the last few months.

Countdown is today opening its brand new store in Rototuna one month earlier than planned, with the store initially solely focused on the significant demand for online shopping seen in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Countdown is today opening New Zealand’s first purpose-built and permanent eStore in Auckland, which will help the busy supermarket business service the significant and growing demand it is seeing for online shopping delivery.

Countdown is supporting efforts to stop wet wipes ending up in New Zealand's wastewater systems by rolling out signage in all of its stores reminding customers not to flush them.
Wet wipes, which have become increasingly popular as New Zealand faces tackles the COVID-19 pandemic, are being flushed down toilets and causing huge, and costly, pipe blockages.

Countdown has today launched a new app called Compass, which enables its supplier partners to more closely monitor sales of their products in any Countdown store.

Available for free on both ios and Android, Compass draws on historical sales patterns to calculate dynamic daily sales expectations for every product in every store.  The app generates alerts for suppliers if sales drop below expectations, giving them the knowledge and opportunity to quickly identify and fix potential out-of-stocks or other issues.