How Woolworths and Coles are fighting Aldi on home brand products | The Business | ABC NEWS

There's talk of a supermarket price war as Woolworths and Coles offer more home brand products to fight off fierce competition from Aldi. Both major supermarket's foreshadowed their results with announcements about price drops on hundreds of products. Professor Gary Mortimer from QUT Business School said Aldi had put pressure on the sector and that's showing downward pricing. He said the battle was playing out in private label. Woolworths reported a 19 per cent drop in its underlying profit, to $1.4 billion for the 2025 financial year. The retail group's headline profit came in at $963 million, an improvement on the previous year when it was hit by higher one-off impairment charges. Chief executive Amanda Bardwell said "current trading remains below our ambition", noting "a highly competitive market right now on groceries and food". Ms Bardwell said customer feedback suggested cost-of-living concerns were still front of mind for shoppers, despite interest rate cuts. Woolies results reveal weaker sales growth than rival, Coles, with supermarket sales up 3.1 per cent. On Tuesday, Coles reported a statutory net profit of $1.08 billion for the 2025 financial year, down 3.5 per cent from a year earlier, while supermarket sales rose 4.3 per cent. Analysts say Coles result beat forecasts, "driven by strong growth in supermarkets." Coles and Woolies are still battling it out with the consumer watchdog over allegations of fake discounts. When it comes to their push into home brand products, the ACCC recently noted, that's where their margins are higher. #ABCBusiness Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... ABC NEWS provides around the clock coverage of news events as they break in Australia and abroad. It's news when you want it, from Australia's most trusted news organisation. For more from ABC NEWS, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY Watch more ABC NEWS content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1 Go deeper on our ABC NEWS In-depth channel: https://ab.co/2lNeBn2 Like ABC NEWS on Facebook:   / abcnews.au   Follow ABC NEWS on Instagram:   / abcnews_au   Follow ABC NEWS on X (Twitter):   / abcnews   Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNEWS #ABCNEWSAustralia