This one’s a little tricky, so watch our lips: Shoprite (and Clicks, and presumably any other corporately-owned in-store pharmacy chain there may be kicking around) are battling to earn their daily rind selling prescription medications to the sick of South Africa. This is not just because of the single-exit-pricing legislation which forbids them from negotiating with their suppliers (which must sting a little), but also because the medical aid racket here is so consolidated, with 85% of MediRite’s sales, for e.g. being bankrolled by the big three: Discovery Health, Metropolitan and Medscheme, giving them a bit of swing when it comes to negotiating the dispensing fee they’re able to charge. Adding insult to injury, retailers are often left with the bill when claims are rejected. 

Comment: A consolidated industry, dominated by a few big players? Excessive buying power? We’re sure we've seen this movie before…

Tesco’s in a spot of hot water, and not the kind you make a nice soothing cuppa from either. You see, they’d gone and told the punters to expect 25%, or £250million more in half-yearly profits than they were actually able to deliver, and this has led to angry calls for heads to roll. Four directors, including UK managing director Chris Bush, have obligingly stepped down, and investigations are under way into what went wrong. The main issue, it appears, is an overstatement of revenue paid to Tesco by its suppliers – ironic for a business in an industry once decried by Tony Blair, no less, for its rapacious ways with the manufacturing sector. Also to blame are the losses to internet retail sustained by the big out of town stores in which Tesco thought it was clever to invest not so long ago. 

Comment: Perhaps not a bad time for the big retailers to dust off the old business model and fumble around for the bifocals behind the cushions of the La-Z-boy…

Whohohoh! Woohoooh! Beloved family-owned Illovo supermarket Thrupps is busting out and hitting the big time, in a forecourt partnership with Total and Mugg n Bean that would see the marmalade-scented glory that is the Thrupps brand available to deserving punters at forecourts across the face of The Beloved Country. SPAR, you will recall, has been wooed and snapped up by Shell, Pick n Pay by BP, Woolies by Engen and FVC by Caltex, putting Thrupps squarely in the big league, without having to put up an actual store in La Lucia or Constantia. The pilot opens next month in Bedfordview, regaling the peckish traveller with services including a bakery, hot food selection, pre-prepared and made-to-order cold food, salads, fresh produce, a delicatessen range, fresh flowers, and a limited high-end grocery and commodity convenience product range. 

Comment: The Dingley’s of the supermarket universe makes its move, just 122 years after launching.

Nestlé have announced that they’re about to drop $200 big ones into their South African plants, including an expansion of their coffee factory and revamps to several other plants. Of at least equal significance is the fact that they’re planning on opening facilities in various other African countries, including Ethiopia, where the economy is growing by some ridiculous figure, and Mozambique. Nestlé currently make about 4% of their revenue off Africa; they reckon this could easily go to 10% with the right assets on the ground. They’ve been eyeing the continental progress of businesses like Shoprite – who are we kidding – of Shoprite, and pretty much Shoprite alone – and believe this could be the harbinger of good things to come, if not in the short term, then certainly not too far down the line. 

Comment: That’s the way to do it.

“Consumer spending in Africa's most-advanced but ailing economy is under pressure,” say Reuters, reporting on Clover’s 14.2% drop in headline earnings for the 2014 financial year. This on a rise in sales – but not in volumes, where growth was lower – of 8.9%, to R8.5billion, while actual profits declined 21% to R189m. Clover had taken a strategic decision to increase prices gradually in order to protect both market share and volumes, with, it appears patchy results. This meant they had to swallow increasing input costs – for example raw milk, up R50million for the year, driven thither by shortages in supply – without being able to recover said costs from you or indeed us. On the upside, Clover expect that a recovery in milk supply as well as “downward pressure” on grain and oil prices internationally should improve things somewhat.

Comment: The reinvention of Clover has been one of the big stories of the past couple years, and they are doubtless able to take these challenges calmly and on the chin.

The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) has reported a massive and disturbing 30% increase in retail robberies for the year to March 2014, with the resulting financial losses up 32%, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. Business robberies as a whole are up 13.7%. What to do, what to do? For a start, working together might be a good idea – some sort of a “Collaborative Anti-Crime Platform that focuses on mitigating the crime risks that currently beleaguer the retail industry.” This according to the Consumer Goods Crime Risk Initiative (CGCRI), a business unit within CGCSA, which for some years ran a pretty successful Crime Prevention Sub-Committee whose responsibility it was to share information, develop solutions and strengthen partnerships with all relevant stakeholders and role players – things that CGRI are suggesting such a platform would be aimed at achieving.

Comment: Sticking to the established programme rather than proceeding in a series of jerks and lurches might be a good start.

Retail trade sales are up! Not by quite as much as crime, admittedly, but 2.4% for the month of July after June’s 0.9% decline is not to be sneezed at. Or not worth the bother, anyway. Happily, though, it confounded the economists, who got it wrong as usual, suggesting that it would be closer to 0.8%. Hang about, anybody got a pencil…ta very much… which means they were exactly 300% wrong, impressive even for economists.

Heineken is not going to the matric dance with SABMiller and that’s official. The smaller brewer rebuffed the Rugby Captain’s earnest suit last week, reasoning cannily that he probably only invited her because if he hadn’t, Netball Captain Annheuser Busch was going to invite him.