A biggish shake-up over the border at Choppies of Botswana. They have mentioned that they expect earnings for the year to be significantly better than they were last year, when results come out at the end of the month, although they have also warned shareholders to exercise caution when trading stock. This has to do with the efforts of a consortium led by Standard Chartered Private Equity Mauritius to buy Spark Capital, an entity created to house nine businesses that supply Choppies. These businesses include Keriotic Investments, which distributes groceries to Choppies, ILO Industries, a grain packaging concern, and Honey Guide, a milling company. Spark is owned in part by Choppies’ directors Ramachandran Ottapathu and Farouk Ismail. The sale is worth P452 million, and is conducted in no small measure as a means of keeping Choppies as a listed entity in line with international standards of corporate governance. And if it’s nitty gritty you’re after, Ottapathu is buying out fellow shareholders Festus Mogae (who used to runs the entire country) and Paul Paledi in the Liquorama chain before selling that business into Spark before the disposal. 

Comment: Good corporate governance is so much sweeter when you can make a buck out of its practice…

There was a time – how long ago it was, how young we seem in the picture! – that we used to wonder idly which UK retailer would be buying which of our local supers. Now it seems that Shoprite – and we drop the name advisedly – might be looking at a purchase in the UK, going where SPAR and cousin Pep have gone before. We use the term advisedly, because it is in fact Oom Christo Wiese who has been doing the nosing around. He already owns a 19% stake in frozen food chain Iceland, “has been linked” as they say in the business pages to a potential deal with Morrison’s, and has been heard to observe that his investment business Brait might be interested in a more mainstream supermarket. Price wars and a changing consumer landscape have depressed the chains there for some time, but he airily dismisses these tough conditions as nothing he hasn’t seen in the dear old SA market. 

Comment: We’ll keep you posted. Again, would our own great businesses be devoting time and treasure to acquisitions abroad if we could manage the economy better at home? We do not know.

This is huge (with a rider, see comment, below): South African consumer goods retail has it first female CEO, and why are we not surprised that the retailer in question is our own dear Woolworths, never one to shy away from a the road less travelled? That was a rhetorical question, designed to make an argument rather than to elicit knowledge. Zyda Rylands – who was appointed as MD for Foods in 2010 and has been with the group for 20 years – will take over as CEO of Woolworths South Africa. Since Rylands took over the portfolio, the food business has grown 83%, with a 240% growth in profit. 

Comment: This is excellent stuff, to be sure. However, to put it in context, Woolworths South Africa accounts for 30% of group sales since the Australian acquisitions. So it’s going to be truly revolutionary, for example, when Mr Moir steps down for a bit of well-deserved and hands over the entire shooting match to Ms Rylands. Until that happy day, we celebrate.

We’re not entirely sure why Pioneer have decided to come clean about the patchy state of their FY just ten months into it, but they have, announcing last week that both their maize and wheat divisions experienced lacklustre growth in the ten months through July. Maize, for example, grew just 1% in revenue for the Group, on volume growth of 6%. Other divisions fared better: breakfast cereals, with 15% in revenue 10% by volume, local juices (13% and 10%) bakeries (15/11) and rice (9 both ways and a win and a place on number twelve in the eighth.) The poor performance of maize and wheat they attribute to a softening of exports into Africa, due to macro-economic conditions over which they have no control. 

Comment: Conditions affecting so many other businesses right now, even those on a less eccentric reporting schedule.

Over at RCL, a massive food group you once knew as Rainbow Chickens, and whose rolling lawns and pristine henhouses you admired from the Cortina as you drove past Cato Ridge on your way down to Margate for Christmas… where were we? Ah yes. Group revenue was up 20.1% for the year which for them ended in June. Even better, headline earnings from continuing operations were up R964m after last year’s loss of R333m. The defining factor in this success, said RCL, was the consolidation of the business into just three units – Consumer, which includes Rainbow and Foodcorp, Sugar and Milling, and Vector Logistics. But reading between the very densely typed lines, it’s all still very much a work in progress – growth at Vector and Foodcorp was flat, and Foodcorp’s performance was “materially compromised by exchange losses on their euro-dominated debt, that sort of thing. Nice recoveries from Rainbow and TSB though. 

Comment: And doubtless great stuff to come in future. A business we have always liked.

Last Friday, the dear old South African Ront hit R13.84 to the US dollar, its worst level since 2001, not counting a recent anomalous foray into R14 territory. And in perhaps more serious news, it was announced that GDP shrank 1.3% quarter on quarter in the second quarter of the year. This puts us on track for a less than princely 1.5% for the year, with no more to be expected next year. And finally, in a mysterious and as yet unexplained move, the Financial Services Board (FSB) cancelled the registration of Fitch Rating's South African affiliate on a request from Fitch itself. On the upside, our remaining ratings agency Moody’s reaffirmed South Africa's credit rating at Baa2, expressing confidence, if that’s the word, that we wouldn’t go into recession this year. 

Comment: Can we hang on until a change in leadership in 2017? And will it make a difference? Fingernail stuff.

No more, those seductive slabs of Lindt, lined up shoulder to shoulder in their crisp white packaging, like debutantes at an exclusive Swiss finishing school. No more, those square plastics tanks writhing with gelatine serpents and dolphins. No more the involuntary swelling of the saliva glands, or the importunate tugging of a child at the hem of your garment. As part of its Good Food Journey, you see, Woolworths is killing the snake, or at least cutting off its head, removing all sweets and chocolates from its impulse shelves in the checkout aisles. Although you’ll still be able to get your weekly fix of Will and Kate in the imported Hello.

Everyone is very excited about the pending merger of the Pioneer Foods and Futurelife businesses, which will help create a whole new niche for functional brekkies in the market, a niche which Pioneer will substantially corner. Everyone that is except rival Kellogg’s, which is kicking up a stink at the Competition Commission about the deal, on what grounds we’re unsure.

Having been unceremoniously ejected from the checkout aisles, like so many debutantes caught smoking at an exclusive Swiss finishing school, the choccies of Lindt are setting up their own store, a “boutique” (as any small shop must now be called) at, where else, the Design Quarter on William Nichol, and one at, where else, the Waterfront in Cape Town.