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The ACCC will not oppose Coles Supermarkets Australia Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Coles Group Limited (ASX: COL) acquiring leasehold interests to establish new supermarkets in Victoria at Mt Atkinson Major Town Centre and Deanside Central Town Centre, subject to an undertaking.

The court-enforceable undertaking accepted by the ACCC requires Coles to divest its ownership and interest in a site at the nearby Kororoit Town Centre.

The two proposed acquisitions combined with Coles’ interest in the Kororoit site would have meant consumers would have limited choice beyond Coles supermarkets in the relevant local area.

Mt Atkinson, Deanside and Kororoit are all areas close to each other, in the Melton Growth Corridor, northwest of Melbourne. Each of the relevant Coles sites in these areas is suitable for large format supermarkets.

The ACCC had concerns the proposed acquisitions would have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in the retail supply of groceries and household products within the local markets of each of Deanside Central and Mt Atkinson.

Coles has undertaken to divest the Kororoit site to Neale Deanside Developments Pty Ltd, trading as Oreana, so that it will be available for a competitor to enter the local area. The ACCC has approved this purchaser.

“Without the divestiture undertaking, the proposed acquisitions would have given Coles three supermarkets within close proximity to each other, in local areas with few alternative sites suitable for supermarkets and few existing competitors,” ACCC Deputy Chair Mick Keogh said.

“In an area in which Coles already had a significant supermarket presence, we were concerned Coles would control most of the sites suitable for large format supermarkets within 5km of the target sites.”

The ACCC was concerned that the proposed acquisitions would significantly increase barriers to entry and expansion for rival supermarkets to enter the relevant local markets.

The ACCC concluded that, absent the divestiture undertaking, the proposed acquisitions would substantially lessen the overall competition in the supply of groceries in the local areas and the broader Melton growth corridor.

“The divestiture ensures that the Kororoit site is available to a rival supermarket operator. It’s important that residents of these new suburbs don’t suffer from a lack of supermarket competition, as we observed for many established suburbs around Australia in the ACCC’s recent Supermarkets Inquiry,” Mr Keogh said.

More information is available on the ACCC’s public register at Coles – proposed acquisition of a leasehold interest at Mt Atkinson Major Town Centre and Coles – proposed acquisition of a leasehold interest at Deanside Central Town Centre .

Background

Coles operates more than 800 supermarkets nationwide. Coles’ large-format stores typically offer standard grocery items, as well as a full-service bakery and deli service. Coles also operates smaller format ‘Coles Local’ supermarkets with a smaller range of grocery items. Coles operates an online grocery shopping and delivery platform named ‘Coles Online’, which allows customers to shop for groceries with either home delivery options or pick up from ‘Click&Collect’ locations at existing Coles stores. Coles Group Property Developments Limited (CGPD) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coles and was established to support Coles’ development operations.

Neale Deanside Developments Pty Ltd, trading as Oreana, is the lessor for the Deanside Central Town Centre located in Deanside, Victoria. Oreana is also a privately-owned Australian property development, construction and investment group.

Mensch Investments No. 3 Partnership is the landholder and developer for the Mount Atkinson Major Town Centre located in Mt Atkinson, Victoria.

The sites at Deanside Central and Mt Atkinson are approximately 3.5km apart and are both located in an area undergoing significant development, known as the ‘Melton Growth Corridor’.

On 17 April 2025, CGPD and Coles entered into a sale agreement and an agreement for lease with Oreana, pursuant to which CGPD would transfer its freehold interest in the Kororoit site to Oreana and CSA would take a leaseback of a developed supermarket at the site.  

The undertaking to divest the site at Kororoit ensures that CGPD divests the site to Oreana by no later than 31 July 2026 and CSA terminates the Agreement for Lease with Oreana.

ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry   

On 21 March 2025, the ACCC published the Supermarkets Inquiry final report. In it the ACCC made a number of findings relevant to how it will assess supermarket acquisitions, including under the mandatory merger regime commencing 1 January 2026, including acquisitions of land. The Inquiry noted that the supermarket industry is highly concentrated with Coles and Woolworths accounting for approximately 67% of share of supply in Australia. The ACCC also found the availability of suitable sites for supermarket retailers is a likely impacted by planning and zoning laws and Coles and Woolworths have advantages over other retailers in securing such sites.

Local area maps

Figure 1 and Figure 2 below provide maps of the local areas around the Deanside Central and Mt Atkinson sites. The maps show existing and prospective medium and large format supermarket sites from public information.  

Figure 1: Deanside Central local area map

 

Figure 2: Mt Atkinson local area map

Women are dramatically more likely than men to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a chronic condition causing abdominal pain, bloating, and digestive discomfort. Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered why.

Estrogen, the researchers report in Science, activates previously unknown pathways in the colon that can trigger pain and make the female gut more sensitive to certain foods and their breakdown products. When male mice were given estrogen to mimic the levels found in females, their gut pain sensitivity increased to match that of females.

The findings not only explain the female predominance in gut pain disorders but also point to potential new ways to treat the conditions.

“Instead of just saying young women suffer from IBS, we wanted rigorous science explaining why,” said Holly Ingraham, PhD, the Herzstein Professor of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at UCSF and co-senior author of the study. “We’ve answered that question, and in the process identified new potential drug targets.”

The research also suggests why low-FODMAP diets — which eliminate certain fermentable foods, such as onions, garlic, honey, wheat, and beans — help some IBS patients, and why women’s gut symptoms often fluctuate with their menstrual cycles.

“We knew the gut has a sophisticated pain-sensing system, but this study reveals how hormones can dial that sensitivity up by tapping into this system through an interesting and potent cellular connection,” said co-senior author David Julius, PhD, the Morris Herzstein Chair in Molecular Biology and Medicine and chair of Physiology. Julius won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on pain sensation.

Search for estrogen

Previous research had hinted that estrogen was to blame for higher rates of IBS in females, but not why. To understand how estrogen might be involved, Ingraham’s and Julius’s teams first needed to see exactly where the hormone was working in the gut.

“At the time I started this project, we didn’t know where and how estrogen signaling is set up in the female intestine,” said Archana Venkataraman, PhD, a postdoc in Ingraham’s lab and co-first author of the research. “So, our initial step was to visualize the estrogen receptor along the length of the female gut.”

The team expected to see estrogen receptors in enterochromaffin (EC) cells, which were already known to send pain signals from the gut to the spinal cord. Instead, they got a surprise: estrogen receptors were clustered in the lower part of the colon and in a different cell type known as L-cells.

The scientists pieced together a complex chain reaction that occurs when estrogen binds to the L-cells. First, estrogen causes L-cells to release a hormone called PYY (peptide YY). PYY then acts on neighboring EC cells, triggering them to release the neurotransmitter serotonin, which activates pain-sensing nerve fibers. In female mice, removing the ovaries or blocking estrogen, serotonin, or PYY dramatically reduced the high gut pain observed in females.

For decades, scientists believed PYY primarily suppressed appetite — drug companies even tried developing it as a weight-loss medication. But those clinical trials failed due to a troubling side effect that was never fully explained; participants experienced severe gut distress. The new findings mesh with this observation and suggest a completely new role for PYY.

“PYY had never been directly described as a pain signal in the past,” said co-first author Eric Figueroa, PhD, a postdoc in Julius’ lab. “Establishing this new role for PYY in gut pain reframes our thinking about this hormone and its local effects in the colon.”

A link between IBS and diet

Increased PYY wasn’t the only way that L-cells responded to estrogen. Levels of another molecule, called Olfr78, also went up in response to the hormone. Olfr78 detects short-chain fatty acids — metabolites produced when gut bacteria digest certain foods. With more Olfr78 receptors, L-cells become hypersensitive to these fatty acids and are more easily triggered to become active, releasing more PYY.

“It means that estrogen is really leading to this double hit,” said Venkataraman. “First it’s increasing the baseline sensitivity of the gut by increasing PYY, and then it’s also making L-cells more sensitive to these metabolites that are floating around in the colon.”

The observation may explain why low-FODMAP diets help some IBS patients. FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols) are carbohydrates that gut bacteria ferment into those same fatty acids sensed by Olfr78. By eating fewer FODMAPs, patients may be preventing the activation of Olfr78, and, in turn, keeping L-cells from churning out more of the pain signaling PYY.

While men have this same cellular pathway, their lower estrogen levels keep it relatively quiet. However, the pathway could engage in men taking androgen-blocking medications, which block the effects of testosterone and can elevate estrogen in some cases, potentially leading to digestive side-effects.

The new work suggests potential ways to treat IBS in women and men alike.

“Even for patients who see success with a low-FODMAP diet, it’s nearly impossible to stick to long term,” Ingraham said. “But the pathways we’ve identified here might be leveraged as new drug targets.”

The researchers are now studying how such drugs might work, as well as asking questions about what other hormones, such as progesterone, might play a role in gut sensitivity and how pregnancy, lactation, and normal menstrual cycles affect intestinal function.

Authors: Other UCSF authors are Fernanda M. Castro Navarro and Deepanshu Soota, PhD.

Funding: NIH Training Grant T32 DK007418; NIGMS K12GM081266-17l; NIDDK R01; DK135714; NINDS R35 NS105038; NHMRC of Australia Investigator Leadership Grant APP2008727; NHMRC Development Grant APP2014250; NHMRC Ideas Grant APP2029332.