Just five years after lumbering into action on central distribution, Pick n Pay is nearly finished, they say, with implementation due for completion just around the corner, in 2016. Recent measures have included the opening of a fine picking area and implementing the latest SAP warehouse system in the Longmeadow and Philippi distribution centres. Fine picking is due for rollout across the remaining six DCs. All of this (once completed) will enable The Big Blue to deliver to stores as many as seven times a week with a 24-hour lead time, across 14,000 products. Where already implemented, centralised distribution has enabled PnP to reduce stockholding by 15% and group wide, to reduce distribution costs by 10%.

Comment: The general message here is that centralised distribution is a very good thing, and should put the wind up Pick n Pay’s competitors. Who had finished implementing it by 1973.

Next month, Massmart will launch its attempt on the hallowed (and cavernous) niches Pick n Pay and Shoprite have claimed for themselves in the nation’s malls as it files a complaint against the dastardly duo who, the Men in Black argue, have used exclusivity provisions in their leases to prevent Game from rolling out its Foodco offering. This, argues dashing young Flight Lieutenant Hayward, is “instinctively” anti-competitive. Last year, Shoprite succeeded in getting an interim interdict which banned Game from selling particular food products in its CapeGate store – at a time when Foodco was competing with Shoprite stores in about 30 other locations. Pick n Pay launched similar actions this year at CapeGate and the Liberty Midlands Mall. 

Comment: Fair point, that dashing young CEO. If we find the idea of a free market so very appealing we should pursue that freedom to its logical conclusion, surely?

Woolies have announced an ambitious plan (soon to be eviscerated by some self-righteous blogger no doubt) to halve the number of products containing GMOs by mid-2015. One of the challenges – and one of the bases for Caroline Hurry’s argument in her TravelWrite blog – is that since South Africa doesn’t have any organic regulation, Woolworths cannot label any of its product organic. To which Woolies replied that Woolies launched its GM policy in 1999 and followed this up a year later by labelling all products which may contain GMOs, to enable concerned punters to make food choices with which they are comfortable. And also by jumping through self-imposed hoops to ensure that organic means organic – for e.g. in the case of chicken, where they source product from suppliers who either grow or import their own organic feed.

Comment: Woolies seems to have become something of a lightning rod for complaints about practices which in larger but perhaps less posh businesses are routinely ignored.

Those Aspen results, then, which always brighten the dreary months between our mum’s birthday and Christmas: revenue up 53% to R29,5billion, with HEPS (which it pleases some businesses to utilise as an indicator of profitability) up 27% with net income at R5billions of rand (SA) – impressive, but it must be said, below the forecasts of the lean and wolfish analysts. Sales back home were flat, but earnings almost tripled in Europe and Latin America, where a spate of recent acquisitions has driven the numbers up somewhat. Looking forward, as we crisp-shirted executives are wont to do, further organic growth may be expected from Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe. Partially to blame for the slower performance here at home was an unexpected reduction in sales to government, who are a big purchaser of Aspen’s ARVs.

Comment: Which will cause Aspen to sharpen their focus on sales to the private sector, which can only be a good thing come this time next year.

You’ve booked your tickets to Retail Congress Africa, right? Of particular interest to us this year will be presentations by David North, Group Executive – Strategy and Corporate Affairs over at Pick n Pay, and also Neel Shad, Business Development Manager at Nakumatt, now East Africa’s biggest retailer with 50 stores in 4 countries: Kenya (36), Uganda (8), Tanzania (4) and Rwanda (2). Just two of the big names on an agenda shaped by In-depth research with international and regional retail stakeholders. The Congress will be held on 18 and 19 November in Sandton, where savvy punters will also want to attend the ever-popular and strategically indispensable Trade Intelligence session on Retail trends.

This has become something of a sorry refrain, but in the absence of any better news, we’ll sing it again: the dear old SA consumer ain’t what she, or in some instances he, used to be. Diddle dee dee. As evinced by the performances and strategies of our various fine retailers. Take Shoprite for example: while they’re sinking R1.5bn into new stores and DCs in West Africa, on the back of promising middle-class growth, they’re putting only R697m in back home, where … you get the picture? Or Massmart, where Joe and Mrs Six Pack are still buying their meat and three veg from Cambridge, say, but not fridges and TVs much at Game. Or Woolies, which while continuing to attract the plusher punter, is nevertheless slashing prices like nobody’s business to keep their middle-income shoppers on the hook. And according to various grim-jawed commentators, next year is not going to be better than this one, au contraire. 

Comment: Stasis and stagnation. Perhaps if winds of change blew through the upper echelons of power we might feel a refreshing breeze down here in the trenches too.

Should Anheuser Busch succeed in its putative (ahem) acquisition of SABMiller, thus creating the world’s biggest collection of the biggest things in the world, it is likely to stir the competition authorities in various geographies into justifiable action. Not least in the US, where, it has been suggested, the sale of Miller Coors might be the only offering sufficient to assuage their righteous anger.

And so at last to Namibia, where Shoprite are embroiled in an imbroglio, so to speak, accused by the Namibian Standards Institution (NSI) of mislabelling products grown in SA as Namibian, and selling these in its Freshmark, Checkers and Shoprite outlets. The Big Red One has 11 days to rectify the situation, apparently. Seven days ago…