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OK, normally we might consider it to be beneath us somewhat to report on the doings of a single-store outfit, but this time we’d be wrong. Durban’s Brett Latimer and Paul Beltramo have dropped 75 bar on opening a 2400m² super on The Bluff in Durban, and called it Oxford Freshmarket. The last time they started a business named after a posh English university, they sold it to Massmart for R500million. Woolies have entered into a partnership with Deacons, their one-time major franchisees in Kenya, to run their retailing operation there under the banner of a new business, Woolworths Kenya Proprietary limited, as a JV in which the Dapper One will hold a 51% stake. Choppies have launched their first South African hyper, a 3610m² whopper in Brits, Northwest. Game have increased their grocery allocation to 20% of retail space, with a long-term strategy to grow to 5000 line items in all its stores, and 85 Game Foodcos up and running by 2016.  Pick n Pay’s champion franchisees John and Peter Baladakis are opening a 3800m² concept store in Brentwood Park in the East Rand, and Shoprite are pretty much keeping on keeping on.

Kraft Foods have just opened a R4.6million microbiology laboratory at their chocolate factory in Port Elizabeth which will enable accurate analysis of the product, which we do not find at all disturbing. Diageo, having failed to buy Jose Cuervo, will come to the end of its 26 year old licence to distribute the clear, deadly liquid in June next year and is said to be looking for a substitute to make up for the expected 2-3% revenue loss. Unilever CEO Paul Polman foresees a ten-year slump in the European market should we all get past the coming unpleasantness on the 21st, while in utterly unrelated news nevertheless reported in the same sentence Foodcorp have just settled with the Competition Commission to the tune of R88.5million stemming from collusive practices in the white maize and wheat milling industries between 1999 and 2007.

Employment, you will be very slightly gratified to note, has ticked up to the tune of 0.1% for the third quarter, with mining down but retail and financial services taking up the slack. Inflation remains unchanged at 5.6% for the merry month of November, although the food index was up to 7% from October’s 6.3%, and overall it’s expected to average between 5.6% and 6% in 2013 – expected by economists, that is, who also expect their investments in porcine aviation to mature nicely over the same period. And finally, although it never really is, is it, there are some mutterings that South Africa’s banks could be headed for a micro-lending crisis if the current growth in that high-risk, high-reward sector continues untrammeled, and the interest rate heads north as it’s been known to do. And that’s a wrap.