Stores in Calamvale, Kenmore and Manly West along with a further 14 stores in the Brisbane metro, Gold Coast, Ipswich and Toowoomba areas will also receive coin lock trolleys by July. New stores at Sandgate, Greenbank and Fernvale have had coin locks on their trolley fleets from opening day.
“At Woolies we are aware that in some suburbs there is a real issue with stolen trolleys,” said Andrew Hall, Woolworths director of corporate and public affairs.
“Over the last eight months our store in Buranda had almost its entire fleet of 200 trolleys removed from the store and not returned so it was clear something had to be done.”
The trolleys require customers to insert a gold coin into the coin box mounted on the handle to release the trolley. When customers have finished their shopping they then have to return the trolley to a trolley bay to retrieve the gold coin.
“We already employ contractors to retrieve trolleys from local streets and we were the first retailer in Queensland to use the Trolley Tracker hotline where residents can alert us to stolen trolleys for later removal,” said Hall.
Hall said the supermarket chain would wait and see for the results of these initial stores before considering any major expansion of coin locks across Brisbane and further a field.