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Just when Woolies thought their bid to acquire the piratically-named Aussie retailer David Jones was a done deal, well avast there, maties! Who be this, hoistin’ the black pennant and layin’ us aboard with his scurvy crew of deserters and blackguards? Why Cap’n Lew, or Red Solomon as he’s known in these waters, who scuppered Commodore Susman’s fleet back in the year seven. Aaarh…what? Oh yes, quite. Mr Lew, you see, denied Woolies the critical 11% of shares it would have taken for them to own Country Road outright by virtue of the fact that he’d snaffled them himself, and now he’s seeking to do the same with Davey Jones. At time of going to press, Cap’n Lew owned less than 1% of the Davey Jones shares. But he reckons there’s more value in them than Woolies is offering, and with a month before the go button gets pushed on the deal, he reckons he might get enough of the other minority shareholders on board to veto it, he with all his retail management experience and all.

Comment: All in the spirit of ongoing friendship between our two great nations...

“Who?” you clamour, flapping frantically through the business pages, and panic-dialing your local provider of retail intelligence. Calm yourselves. Alle are Ethiopia’s state-owned retailer, and Ethiopia is the next – perhaps the first, come to think of it – African Tiger. Which would be a lion, or perhaps a leopard. Anyway, they have 90million people and an emerging middle class who are approaching the $750 per capita income threshold where retail begins to take off. And they have a growing infrastructure of malls, too, like the irresistibly names Zefmesh Grand Mall, Ethiopia’s biggest, in Addis Ababa. Thing is, and it’s a biggy, Ethiopia’s government are not all that keen on the whole free enterprise thing, hence the state retailer approach. Alle has been structured as a private wholesale cash & carry, under the guidance of consultants AT Kearney, and for the forseeable future will be operating in an environment breathtakingly free of competition. They are however keen to attract relevant industry talent, if you have a moment to spare.

Comment: The drive to protect a fragile new economy is understandable and even commendable. But luminaries such as the IMF are concerned that Ethiopia’s massive spending on infrastructure, if unsupported by foreign investment, could sink their hopes for development.

Rad? Is that what the young people are saying these days? Wicked? Fresh? Sick? Probably not. But whatever it is that they do say, they’ve said it loud and clear for Clicks who for the fifth year in a row, have scooped, or indeed scored the Coolest Specialist Health and Beauty Store in the annual Sunday Times Generation Next Awards. And subsidiary Musica, purveyor of not quite as many CDs as they would like, were voted Coolest Music Retailer. Mr Kneale, for his part, believes that Clicks’ brand promise of “feel good, pay less” is a positioning that appeals to the youth market. “This market wants value but also innovation and newness,” he says – qualities on which he believes his brand delivers in spades. On other Clicks news, rival Dis-Chem has been granted permission by the Advertising Standards Authority to continue calling itself "SA’s favourite pharmacy". It provided proof that the research on which the claim was based was “sound and balanced”.

Comment: And in yet other news, Clicks has mentioned that Musica’s top selling item over Christmas was a phonograph, or record player.

Nampak’s turnover was up 12% to R9.8billion for the six months through March, and this includes a 9% gain in South Africa and 24% in other African countries. But hold your horses there: net income was down 6% from R775.2millions to R729.3million, as weaker conditions back home take hold and the economy contracts for the first time since 2009. Trading profit was up 10%, a happier story. Metals continued to perform OK back here though, while glass, paper and plastics came under pressure. If you’d like a little more in the way of detail, here are some interesting factlets: there was reduced demand for milk and juice bottles, indicating some lost market share, while wine bottle tops were impacted by increased bulk wine exports. Demand increased for food jar and plastic bottle closures, and was strong for large drums from alcohol exporting customers. Nampak is investing heavily in the rest of Africa through acquisitions and upgrades to existing facilities, with plants operating now in 12 countries.

Comment: Time to soldier on, keep your head down, stick to the knitting and just generally mix metaphors, Nampak.

Poultry producer Astral has been gunning it in the Cape, where smaller poultry producers have fared poorly in the straitened market of the past couple years – and the two facts are not unrelated. Witness, for example, Astral’s recent acquisition for R5.1million of abattoir equipment which had recently belonged to the Darling Fresh Chicken, currently in liquidation. This will be used to expand capacity in Astral’s Country Fair operation. Witness also the agreement they’ve entered into with Quantum, Pioneer’s struggling poultry subsidiary, which will be supplying Country Fair with 550,000 broilers per week, at a no-doubt attractive rate. All of this will require Astral to spend R80million increasing its capacity to deal with the new volumes, enabling them to process 5million chickens a week.

Comment: Market forces and consolidation eh. What it’s all about.

After having grown a healthy 3.8% in the last quarter of 2013, the dear old South African economy shrank 0.6% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of this year, hit by a massive 24.7% decline in mining output as strikes in the platinum sector – now approaching their sixth month – ground onward. It was this which led Mrs Doubtfire over at the Reserve Bank to keep the interest rate at 5.5%, hoping hereby to hang onto what growth can be wrung for the rest of the year. The Bank has recently downgraded our prospects from 2.6% to 2.1%. Manufacturing also contributed to the decline, losing ground to the tune of 4.4%, while our own great sector, lumped in with the motor trade, contributed 0.3 of a percentage to what growth there was. With the platinum strike now entering its sixth month, it’s likely to have a depressing effect on the next quarter too, keeping unemployment at its stubbornly high level and increasing our chances of a recession.

Comment: There’s a Radiohead song that goes: you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s why it really hurts. Just saying.

Comment: 40%?!

Having taken over the Galderma dermatology JV it had going on with L’Oréal, Nestlé have increased their investment in the lucrative skincare market with the purchase of the rights to several treatments for facial lines and wrinkles from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International for $1.4bn.

The legendary JB Magwaza is stepping down as chair of the Tongaat Hulett board in July. He joined the company in 1975, retiring as an executive in 2003. He has served as Chairman since 2009, and will be replaced by Bahle Sibisi, who joined the board in 2007.

A quick squiz at those Illovo results then, before we go: Group revenue for the year ending March up 20% to R13.2bn, with operating profit level at R1.89bn due in no small part to cheap imports. A good footprint on the rest of the continent helped things along a bit, and distilleries for potable alcohol in Tanzania and maybe Zambia should improve the prospects for the coming year.