When the Dapper One embarked on its Good Business Journey these how many years ago, the back-row cynics at the CGCSA Conference may have dismissed it as mere window dressing before reaching surreptitiously for another chewy Sandton Convention Centre mint. Since then, Woolies have turned the Journey into a key pillar of profitability and a powerful force for responsible commerce in our industry. Now they’re bringing it properly to their suppliers, in a partnership with Californian tech crowd MetricStream, who are providing them with a Sustainability Performance Management Solution to capture and measure sustainability metrics and indicators around energy, water, soil, and waste management. This will enable them to register and bring suppliers on-board for the Journey, measuring compliance through periodic self-assessments and third-party audits, maintaining supplier data, and managing supplier certifications, across over 900 businesses worldwide.

Comment: Epic. The collection and more importantly, use of relevant data is one of the ways we’re going to win this thing.

The first Clicks in-store pharmacy opened up ten years ago today, give or take, in Glengariff Street, Seapoint, so time for a greatest hits album, don’t you think, or a commemorative box-set of generic headache pills? Take it away, boys: since then, the group has added another 330 in-store pharmacies in over 440 of its stores. Pharmacy reeled in R2.9billion in 2013, and now accounts for a whacking 26% of the business. Clicks own 18% of the pharmacy market here and are aiming at 30% as corporate pharmacies grow their share to 50-60% of the market in line with international numbers. When Clicks opened in the then-groovy St Georges Mall location in 1968, it was originally conceived of as a drugstore. It was only in 2003, after lobbying, in which Clicks itself played a significant role, that legislation was passed, allowing corporate ownership of pharmacies and the dispensing of pharmaceuticals.

Comment: And the rest, as they say, is history.

Massmart has begun in earnest its attempt to challenge the relentless advance of Shoprite in West Africa, with the opening of the first store of an entirely new supermarket chain in Lagos, Nigeria. Value Mart, which has been designed specifically for the Nigerian and West Africa markets, is a smaller-format food retailer which will be sensitive to the different consumer expectations and preferences across the various markets. Should the pilot prove successful, the idea is to roll out ten stores in the region over the next two years. Other plans for those great continents include new stores for Namibia and Mozambique, the rollout of Builder’s Warehouse in Zambia and Mozambique, and of course, 22 new stores right here at home. Massmart are talking up their prospects for profitable growth on the back of Walmart’s supply chain and operational expertise, after years of being responsibly downbeat at a time of massive change in the business.

Comment: Small and nimble. We like it. Float like a butterfly, that retail behemoth.

Speculation is gaining traction that in a python-eats-crocodile scenario of the sort that is popular on Youtube, brewer Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev may be preparing to swallow its slightly less bloated rival, one SABMiller of London. This is happening as growth at the Ugly American slows and the ready pool of smaller acquisition targets shrinks under the merciless sun of a market that is already too consolidated. We’re hearing this from major AB shareholders Alpine Woods Capital Investors and Henderson Global Investors who believe that SABMiller’s footprint in fast-growing markets like Africa would get the golden stuff flowing again, as well as from no less a personage than SABMiller CEO Alan Clark who has said that the case could be made for a deal, after some reshuffling of the US portfolio appeases the necessary authorities.

Comment: The good news for lovers of actual beer is that the micro-brewery movement has taken off, and no numbers of acquisitions, however large, will quench that wellspring of creativity, bold tattoos and hoppiness.

You are my candy girl, and you got me…where were we. Ah yes. Sugar. Which is getting some pretty bad press these days, but we’re not here to talk about that. What we’re here to talk about is import tariffs on the sweet stuff, changes to which are in the pipeline. It appears that the department of Trade and Industry and the International Trade Administration Commission of SA (Itac) are now more favourably disposed to raising the tariff, as they did last year on imported chicken after prolonged lamentations by that industry. The trouble, you see, is that countries like Brazil, Guatemala and India are dumping cheap sugar on us, as due to overproduction and subsidies, the world price sugar price is substantially below the production cost.

Comment: And the great thing is, increasing tariffs on sugar would provide our local industry with the protection it needs without significantly raising prices for the consumer, who should eat less of the stuff anyway, just saying.

There are rumblings (they reported vaguely) about a possible future increase in VAT from its current 14% to 15 or even 16% as a means of covering the budget deficit, projected to reach 4% in FY 2014/2015. The Tax Review Committee under Judge Dennis Davis is deliberating over potential amendments to the VAT system, with a focus on making it more efficient and equitable. But raising VAT, as may well be imagined, is no small matter. While it would increase the tax base – raising an additional R15billion for every % increase in VAT - it would directly impact the poor, and the cash flow of businesses, which as you know are compelled to render unto SARS the VAT raised on invoices before those invoices are paid.

Comment: A conundrum wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a ten rand note. Good luck with that pondering, Judge D.

If you like to dip into the Child’s Treasury of Bland and Impenetrable Verse that is SENS, as we occasionally do, you will have noticed that a Mr Christo Wiese is exercising his options to purchase R42 million in Shoprite stock, roughly distributed equally between Single Stock Futures Contracts and Ordinary shares, in the belief, presumably, that too much of a good thing is never enough.

Clover’s stock leapt skyward then slumped back to earlier levels on the news last week that it has entered into talks which could have a material effect on its stock price. It has declined to elucidate. What can this mean?