Far, far away, in the high mountains, in the little town of Caledon, Pick n Pay has opened a grocery store. It is 1,680m² in area and has a dedicated liquor store of 193m² for the thirsty citizens of that perennially desiccated region. It will employ 111 members of staff, 41 permanent, of whom 25 will fulfill a management or supervisory role. Otherwise, what do you need to know? A tailored mix of products and services to meet the needs of this unique community, specialty departments that include a butchery, a bakery, a candlestick makery, a deli-ery and a sushi-ery, plus payments which can be made to the usual suspects (like Eskom and the local constabulary) at the tillpoint. Oh, and trolleys with handles in every colour of the rainbow.

Comment: Be sure to pop in when you’re passing through.

If you had been a fly on the wall at last month’s Massmart AGM, you may have witnessed a spot of unpleasantness from the institutional investors. Or you may not. Massmart aren’t saying, pleading the fifth and revealing only, as required by law, that all motions were passed by a comfortable majority. Although if there had been issues, and we aren’t saying there had, one of them might have been the special resolution to repurchase shares. Massmart has revealed, you see, that in the 26 weeks to December it bought back R124million of its own stock – which according to investor PIC after last November’s AGM (the Wakro transaction meant that they had to have two in the same year to get everyone into step), is a move likely to “strengthen the voting power of Walmart, the controlling shareholder”.

Comment: “Quickly, look!”
“What is it?
We’re putting up new stores in Africa!”
“But what about the share buyba…”
“New stores!”

Going like TOPS after the lucrative Book Club Girls demographic, Food Lover’s Market have launched what they envisage to be a national chain of 100 stores or more by 2018. This thanks to their recent acquisition of 50% of Diamond’s Discount Liquor and the opening of their first two stores, last year, in Bloemfontein and Centurion. The store in the Centurion Mall is a 200m2 boutique which blends seamlessly in with The Food Lover’s Market next door, artfully creating the illusion of a family-owned grocery store. The lighting is soft, the brickwork exposed, the staff warm and welcoming, the whole designed to attract women, who are apparently the next frontier when it comes to booze.

Comment: “You like Chardonnay, don’t you?” asked the cashier. I nodded, breathless, unable to speak. “Why don’t you show me exactly how much you like it?” he went on…

Look, nobody rushes out there to actually buy packaging, but even so, Nampak’s interims here in the Republic were worrying: revenue up just 4% in the six months to March, with trading profit down 20% to R570million, and margins down to 7.9% from a more robust 10.3% last year. According to Nampak, contributions were down from the glass, food and diversified can side of the business, as well as the paper and flexible packaging side, with price reductions in glass and cans being given to customers in exchange for long-term contracts, while consumer demand also played its sorry part. Elsewhere in Africa, different story. A liquid novae, as it were, look it up, look it up. In the far-flung region comprising Angola, Zambia and Kenya, trading profit was up 39% to R197million, with margin up to 15.9%.

Comment: But this was not enough to stall the slide of the share price by a somewhat vertiginous 13% in the days after the old PowerPoint went up.

The Stripy One turned in a flattish set of interims of the sort to which we are becoming sadly accustomed, growing sales a handsome 21% to R14billion for the year to end March, but profit only 2.6% to R1.32billion. What’s up with that? We hear you ask in the vernacular of your teenaged children. Let Tiger do the talking: “The ongoing economic pressures, resultant constraints on consumer spending and increased competitive intensity in the domestic market provide an appropriate context for these results.” Like many of our businesses in these worrying times, Tiger are heading into Africa, not to consolidate the gains made at home, but to mitigate the risks of operating in the South African environment.

Comment: “Appropriate context”, we love it. “The unforeseen loss of our car keys at the after-work function and a chance meeting with our septuagenarian aunt provide an appropriate context for the lateness of the hour and the lipstick on our collar.”

Real economic growth rose just 0.9% year-on-year in the first quarter compared with 2.1% in the final quarter of 2012, the hoary sages over at StatsSA tell us. This is below the expectations of some of our more irresponsible economists, who in their more fanciful moments were pegging growth as high as 2.7%. This news precipitated an immediate 5c drop in the rand against the dollar, against which the dear old ZAR was trading as high as R9.75 last week. The big contributors, if that’s the expression, were the mining and quarrying industry, and finance, real estate and business services, each at 0.7 percentage points, while our own great retail and wholesale sector chipped in only 0.2. At fault, according to those in the know are a sluggish global economy and poor fundamentals here at home.

Comment: We can only hope that that is not an ominous knell we’re hearing but the cheerful sound of a wakeup call.

SPAR International have taken the bold and controversial step of entering Lebanon. This has sparked an unlikely alliance between the Ba’ath Party and the Armenian Democrats in response, fresh unpleasantness between Shiite and Sunni, the resurgence of the Druse militia, nameless but terrifying threats from Israel and the sale of Katyusha rockets by Russia to anyone who will have them. Oh, wait, that’s Charlie Wilson’s War, currently gracing my marble nightstand. Short story, the jolly green one though has signed a licence agreement to operate in that once-troubled and occasionally Biblical land. That The Human League once wrote a song about.

Jeff Wright has resigned as CEO of Country Bird Holdings after a five-year stint, and will be replaced by Marthinus Stander as CEO from July 1. Mnr Stander has held senior executive positions at Pioneer and Rainbow Chicken‚ served his time in the trenches as a KFC franchisee for four years‚ and consulted to the Shoprite Group on their Quick Service Restaurant brand. The appointment, as you will have no doubt picked up through your characteristic perspicacity, speaks volumes about The Feathery One’s interest in food service.

Recently, we are told by the interestingly-bearded chaps over at Brand Union, their client Castle Lager won the Grand Prix at the SABMiller Global Mercatus Awards for marketing excellence in the Big Feller’s global operations. After some years mistakenly touting individual achievement, Castle has moved back to its roots, once again depicting happy, multi-culti SA boytjies watching sport together, as they do, and this apparently is exactly what Dr Mercatus ordered. Narse one, charna.