Woolworths chief executive Roy Bagattini has publicly rejected claims that the retailer was the primary reason Beyers Chocolates entered liquidation. His response follows a wave of criticism after Kees Beyers, founder of Beyers, said that losing Woolworths as a major customer left the chocolatier unable to survive.

Beyers Chocolates, known for products such as Sweetie Pie and Chuckles, is closing after 39 years in business and more than three decades as a Woolworths supplier. The collapse is expected to affect around 700 workers.

That has turned a supplier dispute into a reputational fight. Woolworths has come under pressure as the better-known retail giant, while Beyers has framed the split as a devastating blow that cost the company hundreds of millions of rand in revenue.

Bagattini says liquidation was not Woolworths’ doing

Bagattini said Woolworths had stayed silent at first because it did not want to fight the issue in public, but felt compelled to respond after Beyers’ claims began damaging the company’s name. He said Woolworths could not be held responsible for what happened to a business it had already been separated from for more than a year.

He also rejected the idea that this was a simple David-versus-Goliath story. According to Bagattini, Beyers’ liquidation followed its own business choices, not a deliberate effort by Woolworths to destroy the company.

That response goes to the heart of the dispute. Woolworths is trying to draw a line between ending a commercial relationship and being blamed for the downfall of a long-standing supplier.

Dispute centred on exclusivity and intellectual property

The relationship appears to have broken down after Beyers expanded production to serve other clients. Woolworths said the problem was not that Beyers wanted to supply other retailers, but that it was allegedly producing similar products for competitors using intellectual property developed together with Woolworths.

Bagattini said the retailer and chocolatier had jointly invested millions of rand over many years in recipes, formulations and product development. He argued that Woolworths could not accept a situation where that investment was then used to benefit direct competitors.

He said Woolworths spent two years trying to resolve the dispute before finally ending the arrangement. He also denied claims that Woolworths’ introduction of branded chocolates cut Beyers’ sales and pushed it into financial trouble. Instead, he said Woolworths had grown Beyers’ business by roughly 2.5 times and had even planned to allocate more production before relations broke down.

A bitter ending to a long partnership

For Beyers, the loss of Woolworths was a crushing commercial hit because the retailer accounted for about half its turnover. For Woolworths, the break was about protecting its competitive edge and the intellectual property it says it helped create.

The result is a bitter end to a 34-year relationship that once looked commercially successful for both sides. What remains now is a public dispute over responsibility, with a major South African chocolatier gone, hundreds of jobs at risk, and both sides fighting to shape the story of how it all fell apart.