[4] In 1963, Milne & Choyce, Farmers Trading Company and Woolworths formed a joint venture to establish New Zealand's first shopping mall in New Lynn, Auckland.

[15] Progressive Enterprises, the owner of Foodtown, Countdown, SuperValue and FreshChoice, made a bid to purchase Woolworths New Zealand in May 2001.

[16] The merger application was cleared by the Commerce Commission but then withdrawn following court action by rival Foodstuffs.

[15] In April 2002, Progressive convinced the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to uphold the Commerce Commission's clearance of the original merger application.

[21] In October 2006, Woolworths began operating fuel discount vouchers for Z Energy and Gull New Zealand.

[23] In September 2009, it was announced that the Woolworths brand would almost cease to exist as most of the stores would be rebranded as Countdown over a five-year period.

On 14 November 2011, the Meadowlands store in Howick, Auckland was rebranded as Countdown, marking the official end of the Woolworths brand.

Consumer NZ head of research and advocacy Gemma Rasmussen expressed concern that Everyday Rewards and other supermarket loyalty schemes were not as cheap as they were marketed to be and said that they discouraged competition.

[32] On 10 September 2024, thousands of union-affiliated Woolworths supermarket workers staged a nationwide strike to demand better wages and working conditions.

[33] On 16 December, Woolworths signed a new collective bargaining agreement with First Union, giving union-affiliated employees a 6.8 percent pay rise over a two-year period.