ShopCare is a New Zealand Food & Grocery Council initiative born out of a $1.5 million grant from ACC to tackle injuries in the workplace.

It’s part of a $22 million injury prevention programme by ACC that includes the forestry and construction industries and three district health boards.

Announcing the grant in December 2019, ACC Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said the grants “are about supporting business innovation and strengthening leadership on health and safety in our high-risk sectors”.

FGC’s grant established the Retail and Supply Chain Health & Safety Sector Group, which was publicly launched as ShopCare. It includes senior leaders from retailers, manufacturers, transporters, and suppliers who will share knowledge, problem-solve, and design systems to improve the safety, health and wellbeing of all employees involved in the creation, supply, delivery, and sale of food and grocery products.

It identifies key risk areas in transport, mobile plant and equipment, manual handling, in-store, health & wellbeing, leadership, and manufacturing, addresses the issue of overlapping responsibilities between companies along the supply chain, and agrees on a common language and terminology so everyone is ‘talking the same language’. It also works with organisations to identify best practice, provide opportunities for education and knowledge sharing, and align health and safety processes and systems.

In its first 12 months, ShopCare gathered health & safety data from the retail and supply chain sector to build a picture, alongside other data, of where the industry was at. This was a first for health and safety reporting in New Zealand.

The funding enabled the group to meet a critical need in the retail and supply chain sector for industry leadership to drive long-term positive change.

The proposal for funding was put together by FGC’s Safety Working Group then-Chair Gerry Lynch (CEO of Delmaine Fine Foods), and the Independent Chair of the Health & Safety Association of NZ, Mike O’Brien.