Let’s get cracking with the Clicks interims then: sales up a 9.6% to R9.3bn for the half year, which, the analysts report, confirms their suspicions of tough trading conditions all round, clever chaps that they are. And HEPS, which we are to believe are a company’s best indicator of profitability are up 10.3%. Operating profit was up a more modest 7.3%, while operating margin was down a touch to 6.1%. As usual, UPD was a good story, growing its share of the pharmaceutical distribution business from 25.7% to 26.3%. Clicks itself grew sales 8.2% with pharmacy up 13.1%.

The big Blue informs us that their customers are mad for their Smart Shopper mobile app, well, they would be, wouldn’t they. But it is apparently a nifty bit of biz, allowing the tech-savvy punter to do everything on their phone that they would normally have to trundle up to an in-store kiosk to achieve. Smart Shopper has a reputed 7.9million members, having commenced sign-up just three years ago. 115,000 of those have downloaded the app, so it’s not Flappy Bird, but another great example of how a single-minded PnP move on something when they think it’s got legs.

Woolies would of course have had their reasons for investing in the 38 outlets, the A$600million property portfolio and the flat profit line of the venerable Aussie department store David Jones. And chief among these reasons is, it turns out, to allow the Dapper One to achieve the sort of scale that might one day put them in the top ten globally. Mr Moir believes that David Jones is a keeper, and is in fact in better shape than Country Road was when they bought that, but also that Woolies needs to achieve the sort of size in the south that Inditex and H&M have up north.

By heck it’s overdue, but it’s possible – just possible mind you – that the poultry sector may commence some sort of a recovery in the later months of the year. This after several terrible years, beset as it’s been by high input prices and competition from outrageously cheap imports. Now, bolstered by protective tariffs and lower grain prices after a healthy harvest, things are looking up – provided consumer demand keeps up in these difficult times.

Each year, we ship $651.3million worth of citrus to Europe, making us the biggest non-EU supplier to those markets. And last year, 34 of the shipments we sent over were contaminated to one degree or another with the dreaded Black Spot, an unsightly but otherwise harmless condition of the fruits’ outer layer. European farmers are now calling for a ban on imports from South Africa the moment Black Spot is diagnosed in just six shipments. This has caused our own growers to defensively halt exports to the EU until they are confident that total compliance can be achieved.

According to some recent research, private label is steaming ahead with 11.4% growth per annum, for a total approaching R25billion across all retailers. Good news for them: they achieve margins of 8-10% higher than they do on national brands. And lest you are concerned about the plight of the traditional suppliers to the trade, they’re responsible for between 5% and 20% of the stuff that is edging their own brands off the shelves and out of the baskets. Funny old world.