We honest FMCG types do not usually trouble ourselves with the affairs of furniture retailers, with their “no money down” and their “five years to pay.” But when the retailer in question is one of our own, and is serving as a bellwether (look it up, look it up) to the condition of the dear old SA consumer, we’ve been known to make an exception, so here goes: Shoprite reports that its lending arm, Shoprite Investments, has experienced a decline in credit sales as punters reduce spending in response to the weak economy.

Comment: And this, let’s face it, augurs poorly for December’s retail sales numbers.

Among the festive gloom this year is a ray of light: Stokvels hold almost R50billion (yes, that’s illion with a b) in savings, and they’re about to go shopping. They’re not going to blow all of it at once, mind you, but according to the Old Mutual Savings and Investments Monitor, about 18% of them, holding around R8.8billion in savings, have been set up exclusively to buy groceries. For retailers ready to serve these savings clubs, this is good news. Take Makro, for example – an individual store could have as many as 200 stokvels on its books, offering them not just bulk discounts, but separate till points and deliveries to designated areas.

Comment: A grand South African institution, insufficiently celebrated.

As the BFD grinds inexorably forward, AB InBev is busily flogging certain of SABMiller’s assets so as not to fall afoul of competition authorities around the world. Barman’s specials this week: Central and Eastern European beer brands, including Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic and Tyskie and Lech in Poland. Bain Capital has apparently lost interest in these brands, and has wandered off to another beer tent, leaving Japan’s Asahi Group still in the mosh pit and working up a powerful thirst.

Comment: We’ve mixed quite enough metaphors for this particular story; we’re off.

Still flying high on the wings of Project Cielo Blu, not a mid-90s album of ambient music as might be imagined but a highly-successful supply-chain rejig, Clover have just spun off their raw milk supplier operations into a special purpose vehicle, Dairy Farmers of South Africa (DFSA), in a move aimed at reducing their exposure to the cyclicality of this low-margin business while developing higher-margin, value-added products in its dairy and related food categories. The move will be completed by June next year.

Comment: And it will no doubt prove to be as shrewd and smoothly-executed an initiative as any that preceded it.

Of Business Day’s Five Big Business Moments of 2016, a healthy 40% were supplied by our own great industry, to wit:

Comment: And that’s a wrap.

Big Baccy is apparently going the way of Big Beer, with the pending merger of the two biggest players, BAT and RJ Reynolds – that is, if BAT is happy to up its offer, the original being a little too low for Reynold’s discerning, international, sophisticated taste.