The Midlands Mall is a landmark for weary travellers making their trek to the annual joys of the Lower Marine Parade or Uvongo. It’s also the thrumming heart of the Pietermaritzburg retail scene. For pensioners in the area, it’s endless concourses are a safe and convenient place to take their morning constitutional. And it is undoubtedly a great place to shop, especially now that it has a spanking new Checkers gracing its new extension. It’s the tenth of Checkerses’ new-look stores, its design being reflective of two major global retail trends – convenience and shopping experience. The elevated customer experience includes wider aisles and shelves, with impressive in-store service departments such as a Cheese Deli, Coffee Bar, Wine Shop and Sushi Bar. We recently enjoyed visiting another Checkers new-look store in Canal Walk (previously Century City), which showcased many of its impressive new-look features, including a café, cellar-style wine shop and the newly launched Fresh-X. Take a walk through the store with the Trade Intelligence Store Visit feature here. And in other Shoprite news, the Group plans to open just under 100 supermarkets across the African continent in the next 18 months, the majority being Shoprite stores, with Usave stores totalling almost 20 and Checkers following closely behind.

Comment: Covering all the bases, with characteristic energy and drive.

Word on the street is that Steinhoff International may be on the verge of selling a portion of its R58bn stake in Steinhoff Africa Retail (STAR) in order to free up some ready cash. STAR, you will recall, is home to Pep, Ackermans, Russells, Bradlows, Rochester and Hi-Fi Corporation, although not Shoprite or indeed Checkers. The putative (ahem) sale would take the form of an accelerated bookbuild, which for us laymen, is some complicated alternative to raising funds when other options won’t fly. The view is that Steinhoff intends staying in business globally, but will need to raise some cash to do so, from “non-core” assets. Some analysts believe that its South African business would be particularly attractive to investors wishing to dip a toe into the inviting waters of the Mother Continent. In the meantime, at their inaugural AGM last week, STAR mounted a spirited defence of their nominal independence from Steinhoff against the scepticism of activist investors like Theo Botha.

Comment: Fightback or death rattle? Time will tell.

Plucky Botswanan retailer Choppies, you will recall, issued a cautionary in late Feb to the effect that earnings per share would be 25% up for the half year through December. It has now seen fit to withdraw that cautionary, and also (it seems) to sack auditors KPMG and replace them with auditors and notorious punctuphobes PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). They’re delaying the publication of their half-year results until sometime before the end of April while they re-evaluate their inventories. Some worried analysts have suggested that all of this indicates there are governance issues; others have suggested that profitability for the period has in some way been compromised and could have been overstated in the February update.

Comment: See something, say something. Whatever Choppies’ issues – and this will be revealed in the fullness of time – they seem to be taking decisive steps to shine a light on these and resolve them.

The Willowton Group has graced these pages all too seldom, but here goes: Group CEO Zubeir Moosa has announced that the business will absorb the government’s 7% (when measured against the existing 14%) VAT increase in order to shield their lower-income customers from immediate hardship. Willowton brings such staples to the market as cooking oil, maize meal and rice, which are indeed VAT free, but also a number of products such as Sunfoil margarine, Crown, Allsome, Sunshine D, Romi, D’lite, Wooden Spoon, Cordon Bleu, Sona and Britelite that attract VAT, hence the decision to fork over the full 15% to the government as soon as the increase kicks in. “This is our way of showing customers that we care for their well-being,” says Mr Moosa. “We also challenge other FMCG companies and retailers to follow our lead in protecting the already hard-hit consumers of this country,” he rather cheekily adds.

Comment: Excellent and timely stuff from an icon of the industry.

A tense week in the animal protein sector. First off, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries has suspended the import of some products from Brazil as executives at the country’s main chicken exporter, BRF, are being investigated for suspected corruption and the evasion of food safety checks. Here in the Beloved Country, alarm bells have sounded about the possibility of an outbreak of Avian flu after some African penguins at the Boulders beach colony – an unlikely but dangerous vector for disease – were found to be infected with the H5N8 avian flu virus. The industry managed to contain an outbreak last year at the cost of almost R1bn in culled birds. Finally, the pork industry has expressed concern at a precipitous drop in prices caused by declining demand following the Listeriosis crisis.

Comment: It may be that Brazil’s loss will somehow be the pork industry’s gain, but that would be a stretch.

So Moody’s have magnanimously let us off the hook, affirming our investment-grade rating revising our credit outlook from negative to stable, which was jolly decent of them. They’ve also let it be known that they perceive a gradual reversal in the weakening of our national institutions, and that this, they feel, portends well for an economic recovery. The Reserve Bank has welcomed the announcement, and emphasised the critical connection between political and investment stability (coughEFFcough!). And let’s face it, a Baa3 rating, the lowest investment grade rating available, is not all that.

Comment: Still, if that was a gradual reversal, we’d very much like to see what a sudden one looks like.

The new food MD over at M&S lads, is none other than renowned scallywag Stuie Machin, last seen at Steinhoff UK where he did a stint as CEO. Good luck that man! Machin, says M&S CEO Steve Rowe “gets food retailing and has first-class experience of driving change in big food retailers.” Over the pond, as Amazon get deeper into grocery, Walmart gets bigger on delivery, teaming up with Fedex to get the good stuff to your door asap, and announcing that by the end of the one eight, 800 stores will be offering same-day grocery delivery to punters. And finally, loads and loads of stuff about Aldi and Lidl, who are growing store footprint at an astounding pace and also making inroads in the USA. Aldi, Lidl, Aldi, Aldi, Aldi, Lidl, Lidl.