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It was Shoprite’s AGM last week, and newly enlivened by the gloomy news from rivals, no doubt, and his own very pleasing numbers – sales up 15.6% for the first quarter and 34.3% in Africa – ever-ebullient CEO James Wellwood Basson was more robust than ever, setting about himself briskly with a birch switch at various targets: GDP (“We’re losing the edge, we’re growing at 2%; we need Africa.”), bureaucracy (“It’s a constant fight to get stuff approved or not approved in South Africa”), job creation (“My biggest worry is that job creation in South Africa is so low”), Eskom (“The electricity bill could go to 3.5% to 4%” from its current 2%) and bureaucracy again (“We supply our stores in Angola with 275,000 tons of beef from Argentina and none from South Africa because of all the regulations”). On that red tape, he notes that they’ve opened an office in Portugal, because it’s easier to manage supply from there than from here.

Comment: Tell it like it is, you irascible yet beloved doyen of the industry, you.

Look we don’t pretend to know what ratings agencies are, what they do, or indeed who rates the ratings agencies. But we know when they downgrade something it’s generally not a good thing for that thing. And that’s exactly what Fitch have done to poor old Pick n Pay this week, downgrading their National Long-term Rating from Stable to Negative. This, says Fitch, because of The Big Blue’s slower pace of deleveraging (which we think means settling up) until 2014. Also the “increased pressure on Pick n Pay’s business profile” in the competitive retail environment. Other issues are delays in the implementation of the transformation programme, as well as their exposure as a business to the vagaries of consumer spending – although in fairness they really do share that with the competition. On the upside, the National Long-term Rating has been affirmed as something known as an “A (zaf)”, reflecting inter alia the existing strength of Pick n Pay’s market position and the positive steps taken towards transforming the business.

Comment: So there, as far as we can tell, you have it.

OK, technically this is a Walmart story. Unless you happen to own shares in NCR, the cash register gang… wait that didn’t come out right. Anyway, thing is, Walmart have decided to go all out on self checkout, and will be installing 10,000 SelfServ Checkout lanes to more than 1,200 Walmart stores across the US in 2013. Walmart’s goal is to provide customers “with the quick, easy and convenient checkout experience they tell us they want.” NCR’s goal is to help, and this they achieve through their providing expertise from its Human Factors Engineering group to make the self-checkout experience as easy and convenient as possible through user interface design, configurations, layouts and best practices. There is also, needless to say, a fat service and maintenance contract for NCR in the deal. The research has backed up this move by The Big Feller – 70% of all consumers questioned said they’d like to see the option at Walmart and other major retailers.

Comment: Self-checkout, for which the technology has existed forever, is coming of age. It will be interesting to see who goes first in these parts, and our money is on Makro.

This is how business is done in Zimbabwe: Tongaat Hulett have apparently been notified that their subsidiary there, Triangle, has been given 14 days to comply with the indigenisation requirements of 51% local ownership, or get kicked out. Specifically, according to a letter from the Ministry of Indigenisation’s GM, “We would like to advise that the ministry’s patience is fast running thin. Should we not receive a proper compliant plan within the prescribed period, ministry and government would take it that shareholders of Triangle are not interested in continuing to do business in the country.” There is a school of thought that says the law does not make provision for summary expulsion, but still, nervous times for Tongaat, who derive 19% of group revenue from their operations in Zim, and 32% of their profit.

Comment: Just horrible.

This is news, no really: the Department of Agriculture is proud of its partnership with Walmart/Massmart, despite the best earlier efforts of no fewer than three (3) departments to scupper the deal one way or the other. “Their programme offers the most comprehensive kind of assistance to smallholder farmers to my knowledge by a corporate company,” said Minister of Agriculture Tina Joemat-Petterson, speaking this week at the first AGM of the African Farmers Association of South Africa. OK dammit, putting our unworthy cynicism aside, it is excellent to see this level of pragmatic enthusiasm from within the Party. Mrs J-P, encouraging small farmers to work with commercial farmers to hone their skills, sees the endeavour as a route out of subsistence to profit for hundreds of small agriculturalists, and announced that the department had established a Service Delivery Forum to brings all stakeholders together around the same potjie.

Comment: It might be that the Walmart/Massmart deal has opened the floodgates on a golden age of the public private partnerships SA needs in order to get competitive once more.

The Big Red One will soon be opening their sixth store in Nigeria, in the newly-built Kwara Mall in Ilorin, the capital of the agriculturally well-endowed Kwara state, whence Shoprite is in discussion about sourcing much of its produce.  At 3,700m2, the store will be as large as the flagship in the Palms, Lagos.

Celebrity psychopath Gordon Ramsey is lending (which is almost certainly not the right word) his support to Checkers’ enthusiastic endeavours in carnivorous excellence in a series of television commercials. Says Checkers marketing maven Neil Schreuder: “We worked incredibly hard to make our butchery offer world-class, and to have someone of Gordon's calibre endorsing our range is an absolute privilege.” Says Gordon: “@#$%ing right it is!”

Not the very best quarterlies from Anglovaal Industries (AVI) whose revenue for the three months ending September rose just 7.1% year-on-year, in a collimate of depressed demand and increased competition for share of wallet in some categories. And troubles over at I&J, where lower catches and routine maintenance on the fleet have suppressed volumes.