\u201cThey pulled the plug on us, and the pressure of the debt just became too much, and there was no other option but to actually close down the business,\u201d Beyers said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, following several media interviews with Beyers, Woolworths CEO Roy Bagattini said he felt compelled to publicly respond to the collapse of Beyers Chocolates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with RSG\/Moneyweb Radio<\/a>, Bagattini said Woolworths did not want to air the issues in the public domain, but had to address Beyers’s allegations to protect its reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s our brand, and we take it very seriously when our credibility and certainly our ethics are called into question,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bagattini rejected the notion that Woolworths was a “goliath” in a David vs Goliath situation, and said that the group had nothing to do with Beyers’ liquidation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He noted that the group had ended its relationship with Beyers over a year ago, and that the chocolatier went in the direction it did based on its own business decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bagattini explained that tensions with Beyers emerged in 2023 when the retailer discovered the supplier was allegedly producing similar chocolate products for competitors using Woolworths-developed intellectual property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur team found out that he was supplying our direct competitors with products using and leveraging our Intellectual Property (IP),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bagattini said Woolworths and Beyers had jointly invested millions of rands into developing formulations, recipes and products over many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen someone does that, our competitive advantage gets leveraged against us, and that\u2019s certainly something that we weren\u2019t happy about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Bagattini, Woolworths spent two years trying to resolve the dispute before eventually ending the arrangement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve engaged with Beyers extensively over a two-year period to try and remedy the situation, but we weren\u2019t able to come to terms on it, and so we ended up concluding the overall arrangement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said Woolworths had no issue with Beyers supplying other retailers, provided it did not involve products or IP developed jointly with Woolworths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe fact that he may have wanted to supply other retailers\u2014no issue with that whatsoever\u2014but don\u2019t supply them with product that we\u2019ve invested in creating and developing and give away our IP,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also rejected claims that Woolworths\u2019 introduction of branded chocolate products reduced Beyers\u2019 sales volumes and pushed the company into financial distress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s not really correct. Up until the years preceding us concluding our arrangement with him, we literally doubled his business,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bagattini claimed Woolworths had grown Beyers\u2019 business by around 2.5 times over several years and had planned to allocate additional production to the chocolatier before the relationship deteriorated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Woolworths CEO Roy Bagattini has responded to claims that the retailer is a corporate bully after the liquidation of Beyers Chocolates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":860156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[25391,853,949],"class_list":["post-860135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-beyers-chocolates","tag-south-africa","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":860162,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860135\/revisions\/860162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Not a David and Goliath scenario <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Woolworths-sign--1024x576.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n