A heck of a trading update from SPAR this week – sales up everywhere across the group for the 17 weeks to end January, with only Switzerland recording a decline. Overall, sales, including the Christmas bump, were up +7% to R33.8bn, with Group sales here at home up +7.9% with the inclusion of the recently-acquired S Buys pharmaceutical distributor. Tempering the good news a touch, like-store sales in the South African business were up +6.4%, reflecting the tough trading conditions under which the industry has laboured these past couple years. Its core business reported a sales increase of +5.7%, while Tops – traditionally the top performer – blasted through with an increase of +11.1%. Build It also performed well, growing +7.2% for the period, compared with +4.3% last year. On the back of this good news, the share price climbed +3% on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). 

Comment: An indispensable and iconic South African business, trading well in adversity.

Helping out the punters this week is Shoprite, which has announced that for the moment, its disaster relief fund – that’s R1.4m – will be harnessed in the pressing cause of water relief. Inundated – you’ll excuse us – with offers from shoppers who wish to donate bottles of water, The Big Red One has instead made it possible for them to make a donation in R5 increments at the till point, saving on packaging costs and enabling Shoprite to respond to people’s needs in the most efficient way possible. In other Shoprite news, MediRite Pharmacies are now offering pensioners free access to health checks which include blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure and body mass index (BMI) tests. And in a reminder for Shoprite punters about the bullet Whitey dodged on their behalf, the share hit a record high last week before edging back down a bit, even as Steinhoff tanked and Star – the investment vehicle into which Shoprite was to be bundled – traded 20% down from is December price.

Comment: Shoprite’s humanitarian efforts are guided by the pragmatism that make them such a great South African business.

What to expect from Pick n Pay in 2018: loads of innovation in convenience food, including ready-to-eat meals. Their research has indicated that South Africans are looking to save by cutting back on eating out; ready-prepared food is an affordable option, especially when you’re entertaining at home. Some areas to watch out for: convenience meals in their Carb Sharp range, read-to-serve side dishes for the braai, and convenience desserts. If you want to know more about convenience as a growing consumer goods retail trend in SA, read here… or if you want a more detailed deep-dive into grocery retail trends as we see them (and why on earth wouldn’t you), click here… But back to us, erm, them… What not to expect from Pick n Pay in 2018: a return to the glory days of the Smart Shopper programme. Points are still worth half of what they were when the scheme launched, and must be redeemed within a year of being earned, a move about which some shoppers are still niggling. 

Comment: But about those trends of ours… alright fine, we’ll stop.

“Hugely profitable” and “poultry business” are not words one is typically able to place convincingly on the same page, let alone the same sentence, yet each expression applies equally to Astral Foods, whose Headline Earnings per Share almost doubled to R735m for the year through September 2017. Fair enough, says a certain Chris Logan, CEO of Opportune Investments, but are management not now likely to commence sitting on their hands and whistling a jaunty, carefree tune? Absolute pish, replies Astra CEO Chris Schutte. Not to mention tosh. While it is true that operating efficiencies have gone through the roof these how many years, there’s more where that came from. IQF has been a winner in the South African market for Astral, and they’ve hired 18 new sales and marketing staff to ensure continued growth in that category. And investments in the agricultural side of the business are just beginning to pay off. So take that, Mr Smarty-pants Analyst. 

Comment: Nice work in a devilishly tricky sector. Keep it up.

A trading statement from Sea Harvest this week, who aver, if that’s the word, that punters can expect an increase of around +28% in earnings per share for the year through December. How did they pull that off? Strong market demand for Cape hake globally, they say, and increased productivity brought about by recent investments in the Saldanha Bay processing plants. Last year, you will recall, Sea Harvest listed independently on the JSE after its unbundling from Brimstone, which continues to hold more than 50% of the shares in the business. Also last year, it bought a freezer trawler from an Icelandic outfit, and acquired the entire Viking Fishing business and a 51% stake in Viking Aquaculture. Viking is one of SA’s largest fishing businesses, bringing such pelagic delicacies as hake, pilchards, prawn, snoek and angelfish to an appreciative market. 

Comment: A tough sector in which our local businesses are making a global impression.

Retail spending grew +3.8% for the month of December 2017, its highest level since the heady days of May 2013. Don’t believe us; ask Mastercard, who know a thing or two about how punters choose to blow their 13th cheques in the lead up to Christmas, and whose SpendingPulse report keeps tabs on it. If you count inflation, which at the time contributed 3.7 percentage points, sales grew 7.5% YOY, buoyed by better GDP growth, a lower inflation outlook and a stronger rand, which made gewgaws from China and the Philippines more affordable at the time. This week’s StatsSA report might tell a slightly different story, but for now we’ll take what we can get. In the meantime, fixed investments plunged in 2017 to levels last seen in 2004, as political uncertainty and a decline in business confidence prevented corporates from coughing up on infrastructure. The number of investment projects by big businesses and government dropped from 67 to 48, with a decline in value to R63bn, from R90.6bn the previous year. 

Comment: Testing times, with the silver lining showing up in contrast with the massive cumulonimbi below.

“Coca-Cola,” screams the headline, “targets millennials with plant-based dairy-free smoothie launch!”. Nice one Coke. Next up: “Colgate targets millennials with artisanal gin toothpaste!”? “Toyota targets millennials with bearded hybrid!”? By the way, the drink in question, launched in the UK, is called AdeZ, and if we’re not sure how to pronounce it, the millennials probably aren’t either, but at least one of the options is probably the last thing you’d want to call a consumer goods product.

Turning the money taps on in Zimbabwe this week is Unilever, which has just opened a new $500,000 Royco Usavi Mix packaging plant in Harare, in addition to the $8m it has invested in upgrading the site over the last difficult five years. While Le Grand Bleu had scaled back its spend over the past few years, the indications are that those days are over. The plan, says Unilever, is to link up with local businesses – presumably informal traders – “creating value across value chains” as they put it.

So Tesco has decided to go all-in on a chain of cut-price stores aimed at cutting rivals Aldi and Lidl off at the knees. Good luck with that, Britischer. It’s also facing an equal pay claim from female shop floor workers which if successful could cost it up to £4bn. Finally, an American hedge fund is opposing its takeover of the Booker Group, which it says should hold out for a better offer. Across the pond, Amazon has commenced to offer grocery deliveries from Wholefoods for its Prime members, can’t say we wouldn’t take advantage, were we ever to find ourselves over in la-la land. Not much on offer from the other global retailers, so we’re calling it a wrap.