Retail giant Shoprite, together with property behemoth Resilient, construction titan Group Five and financial services leviathan Standard Bank is throwing in the brobdingnagian sum of R1bielion ront for the construction of ten malls in West African colossus Nigeria. Sites for the malls, which will vary in size between 10,000m² – 15,000m² have been identified in and around Lagos and Abuja, and construction will take place over the next three years. Shoprite kicked off in Nigeria in 2005, and now owns four stores there, a relative drop in its ocean of 217 stores elsewhere on the continent excluding the Beloved Country. But according to the Resilient boys, Nigeria is where it’s all at right now. Back home, they report dolefully, the risks are up and the returns, down.

Comment: Dig we mention huge? Because that is something else that this is going to be.

While some retailers have announced lavish things coming down the track for forecourts, and others have ignored the format with studied insouciance, SPAR have taken a more measured approach to the channel. According to Captain Hook, they will shortly be entering the forecourt convenience market, after thinking about it on and off for years, and despite some initial trepidation. They are now focused on the opportunities represented by the format, and have been approached in this regard by various fuel retailers. Forecourts are a potential winner for SPAR – as our Uncle Sydney points out, the group is well set up for distribution to widely scattered small formats. Another drawcard is the stiff competition for retail space now that another player in the form of Massmart has entered the food retail game.

Comment: Not to mention (although granted, we are mentioning) the fact that SPAR has an excellent existing franchise model, although we don’t call it that, which will be a good fit for the hardworking owners of service stations all over the map.

A firm handshake, a steady gaze, a respectable batting average and now this: The Dapper One has had its reputation for reputationliness affirmed by no less a body than the Reputation Institute in their 2012 RepTrak Pulse survey. Woolies came top in the survey, conducted among SA’s top 20 listed businesses, with 78-odd points, giving MTN a 10-point pasting into second, while Clicks was the only other retailer in the top ten, at sixth. Lovers of gimmicky beverages cribbed from overseas markets will no doubt be less than charmed to find that the Frankie’s contretemps (we’re allowed to use French; it’s a Woolies story) didn’t have any effect on Woolworths’ reputation, which may or may not have had something to do with the frictionless damage control which whirred into action when the scandal went down. New CEO Ian Moir came out particularly well in the survey, conducted among 1,300 South Africans from LSM 6 upwards, who described him as well-respected and having a positive influence on the company.

Comment: Interestingly, the overall results for the top twenty were down, indicating a general decline in the trust between SA consumers and the businesses who serve them.

Listed fishing business Oceana has copped a guilty plea in a five-year-old market fixing investigation by the Competition Commission, which found that almost the entire pelagic fishing industry, businesses large and small, were guilty of anti-competitive practices in the purchase of pilchards, anchovies and red-eye from smaller businesses, including individual boats and their crews. Partners in the nefariousness included Pioneer Fishing and Sea Harvest. Oceana has agreed to cough up R34.7million, or 5% of its 2010 pelagic earnings rather than the more usual 10%, in exchange for co-operating with the Commission. In other Oceana news, the business grew turnover 21% to R2billion for the six months to March and operating profit before abnormal items 41%, with canned fish  sales volumes on the domestic market contributing mightily to the performance.

Comment: Say what you like about the Comish, they have done a heck of a … come to think of it, don’t.

If the word on the dusty, crowded street is too be believed, Tiger Brands may be looking at the acquisition of a majority interest in Nigerian flour milling company Dangote Flour, one of the top ten businesses on the Nigerian stock exchange, in a deal which could be worth at least $150m if Tiger took up 80% of the shares at the current rate. Nigeria is Tiger’s primary focus for growth outside SA right now, with grain division executive Thabi Segoale having been despatched to head up its interests on that frankly hectic market. And last year, you will recall, they bought 100% of Deli Foods Nigeria, a biscuit maker, for R296,3million, and acquired a 49% stake in UAC Foods Nigeria for R421,1million.

Comment: And with those ten new Shoprite-anchored malls coming onstream, they should have no shortage of shelves to fill.

Astral has joined the unseemly rush at this time of year to report interim results, and we wish we could say they were all that, but they aren’t – operating profit down 14% to R324million on revenue which grew 16% from R4,215 million to R4,885 million on increased volumes and higher sales realisations across its operations, which according to the blurb on SENS include “broiler genetics, production and sale of day-old chicks and hatching eggs, integrated breeder and broiler production operations, abattoirs and sale and distribution of various key poultry brands as well as animal feed pre-mixes and the manufacturing of animal feeds.” The problem, as always with the poultry industry, is input costs, over which producers like Astral have little control, vs the price at which they can sell chicken in a very competitive market. And the cost of maize has doubled to three grand a ton over the past four years.

Comment: As we have often remarked, it takes a certain kind of person to don the suit of feathers.

Several critical bits of info have recently been released about the state of the economy and the people in it, and things are a little on the shaky side. First up, retail trade sales, which are expected to increase by 6.8% year-on-year, for the month of March, down from 7.2% in February, according to a survey of beard-tugging economists by I-Net Bridge, following significant month on month declines in growth for Jan and Feb, suggesting that consumers are under pressure from the rises in the prices of such unavoidables as transport, water, electricity, and food. On the upside, though, consumer spending was up 4.6% for the fourth quarter of last year, after an increase of 3.4% in the second quarter of last year and 3.8% in the third quarter. This suggests that some species of boom might be underway, but don’t leap up on those white-slipped convention centre chairs just yet: this spending may soon be curtailed as punters meet the headwinds detailed above, and as the recent increase in joblessness, back over an official 25%, makes itself felt.

Comment: Apartheid was the curse of generations past. Unemployment is the tragedy of this one. And it may prove ultimately harder to dislodge.

or maybe

May the sales force be with you

we’ve got plenty more where those came from.

Having tested the technology at a store in Milton Keynes, Asda are considering deploying an army of virtual holographic sales assistants to meet, greet and generally assist punters in those difficult everyday decisions, like what cabernet to buy and whether to give up a life as a farm boy on dusty Tatooine for the glamorous but ultimately more dangerous career as a starfighter with the Rebel Alliance.

Flushed with the success of their holographic salesforce, Asda have begun trials of ‘boerewors’, a traditional South African sausage, at 50 of its outlets, as part of its plans to offer more South African foods to homesick quantity surveyors and drug triallists. The catch is that it will be branded “Aunty Joan’s Boerewors Sausages”, which has the flat ring of inauthenticity about it.