Supermarkets spend night altering prices

It's been a long night for supermarket staff around the country changing all the pricing for today's GST increase.

Progressive Enterprises shut all its Countdown and Woolworths supermarkets at 10pm yesterday and won't be reopening until 10 am today, with staff changing thousands of price tickets, verifying the new prices and re-jigging the stores' computer systems.

Spokesperson Penny Newbigin says they're very busy even though they'd prepared by putting new price tickets underneath the old ones in recent weeks.

She says managing the price change has cost Progressive Enterprises around a million dollars.

- NEWSTALK ZB