South Australian newsagents, through ANCOL, are spending in excess of $100,000 to protest the failure of ANCOL’s bid to win a government contract. The spend is in the form of professional lobbying. Yesterday in Adelaide there was a public protest as part of the campaign.
While the lobbying focuses on the politicians, some newsagents have said they would like to see the ACNOL bid document to assess for themselves if the business put forward an appropriate tender on their behalf.
There could be more to this story than what newsagents have been told.
I think your spot on.
Newsagents in SA deserve better than this ,ANCOL management and the board need to be more transparent to its members.
KW Wholesalers is a subsidiary to ANCOL setup to supply stationery directly to schools and businesses, I received a delivery from KW to a school in my area by mistake. As the KW invoice looks similar to the ANCOL invoice I opened it by mistake. I was surprised to see that KW are supplying stationery to schools at our cost price. So we are closed out of that market
I do not agree with ANCOL management and the Boards approach to this Tender issue. The contracts were signed late last year ANCOL did not put their best foot forward so were not considered. I would have thought the time to lobby the government would have been when the Tender documents were first received by ANCOL back in April last year, not wait until October and by the Tenders had been let out to contracts.
My concern as a Newsagent ,is with ANCOL spending all this money on a so far failed campaign and so it is likely profit for this financial year may be down considerably , will Newsagents at the end of the day be paying for this campaign via increased stationery prices and reduced rebates time will tell I suppose there is more to play out with this situation.
For interstate Newsagents you may not realise here in SA we do not have much choice as to where we buy our stationery from , there is one other small supplier in Adelaide but they don’t have the range.
Any ANCOL shareholders wanting to see the Tender document should write to the CEO and the Board, I would also be asking for the minutes from the last 3 or 4 Board meetings