Sometimes the news is the news. This week, the news is that Woolies CEO, Ian Moir, is R191m some change to the good since the Dapper One bought Aussie money pit David Jones back in the ’14. After the acquisition, as you know, the value of the business has tanked to something south of 50% of what they paid for it, and Mr Moir has decamped to the Blighted Antipodes with a pack of Pratley’s and a spackle knife to see if he can patch things up. To be fair, though, while he picked up a handsome R23m in the last year, that was R7m less than the previous year, and he didn’t get a performance bonus. He’s also been pretty forthright about his failings vis-à-vis David Jones, while remaining upbeat: “I regret the price, and buying it at that time – hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he says. “But I think we have a great asset now.”

Comment: The optics might be dodgy, but this is pretty standard stuff. A PR blip rather than a scandal.

A basket of minor news items from The Big Blue this week. First up, to ensure that Everything Goes Smoothly on the Day, and, presumably, to make a buck, they trialled their Black Friday deals for one day only last week, stress testing their systems for a bigger and better consumer jamboree this year. This will no doubt spark an arms race among competitors, which will result in Black Friday being held every year the day after Valentine’s, instead of the day after that great South African holiday of Thanksgiving. Secondly – and don’t be alarmed now, it’s just an accounting thingamajig, not real money – Pick n Pay will be restating their debt from R1.6bn to a slightly more unwieldy R17bn in the 53 weeks to 3 March 2019, making it one of the first businesses to adopt the IFRS 16 standard that our money boys have been slavering over how long now. And finally, the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (sefa) is super stoked with its Pick n Pay collab, by which they split the bill for financing certain PnP Market stores in SA’s under-served townships. Financing for 15 sefa-funded stores has been approved, three of which are already open.

Comment: The Market project is one to watch in the years and even decades ahead.

Hot on the heels of Pick n Pay’s new Mall of Africa flagship last week comes a brand new Shoprite Hyper, in Sandton City, which might one day be an actual city. The behemoth features all the mod cons, including a temperature-controlled wine cellar, a decadent chocolatier bar, a coffee station , an in-store Kauai, a sushi bar, and a coal-fired pizza oven. The aisles will be wider and the floors seamless, for easier trolley-manoeuvring. It will also feature more jobs: the store employs 290 staff, of which 225 are women. And speaking of jobs: Shoprite created 3,175 of them last year, for a total of 147,000+ people on the payroll, with an emphasis on youth: 68% of staff are under 34. Incidentally, this makes it South Africa’s largest private-sector employer. Retail has been one of the few thin silver linings in the looming cloud that is unemployment: our industry grew employment +0.8% year-on-year for the first quarter of 2019, and added a total of 84,000 jobs in the second quarter.

Comment: In some ways, retail is South Africa’s essential industry, driving many other sectors, and providing economic growth and employment when both are in short supply.

Big up this week to Pick n Pay who join nine of the biggest retailers in the world – including IKEA Food, Kroger, METRO AG, Tesco, and Walmart – in the 10x20x30 initiative: ten retailers and food service providers and 20 each of their big suppliers, uniting to cut food waste in half by 2030 , both in store and upstream. Nice one. Over in the US, Walmart has entered the primary healthcare market, with the opening of its first in-store clinic in the proud state of Georgia. It has also just launched its new healthcare website, WalmartHealth.com, where you can schedule appointments for immunisations, dental, optometry, hearing and counselling, as well as general healthcare. And speaking of health, Tesco has launched dedicated plant-based and vegetarian zones in stores for the first time ever, to make its vegan offerings easier to find, and will also be displaying some plant-based foods in the meat aisle, as the demand for meat alternatives rightly soars.

Comment: The ongoing evolution of retail in response to environmental factors and changing consumer demand is a miracle to behold.

Some weeks ago, we lost one of our own – Stephen Maister, a journalist who has dedicated his career to covering this great industry we call home. Stephen was managing editor and publisher of Supermarket & Retailer, which he took over from his late father, who founded it as The General Dealer in 1957. A master wordsmith, he brought the industry alive in print, and served it with passion and principle, educating non-retailers and retailers alike about the South African trade in all its rich variety. He was an astute businessman, who took a great asset and made it greater. He was also a wonderful colleague, happy to share insights and information with us of the Tatler, and we will miss his presence at industry events, in his trademark black jeans and leather jackets, bringing just a touch of outlaw style to the proceedings.

Comment: Hamba kahle, boss.

It’s not easy to turn around in the sugar cane, as we could have told you after any number of twenty firsts and rural weddings, all those years ago. But Tongaat Hulett are giving it a go, with a brand new chairman, four other new board members, and a strategy that will see them scaling back their direct sugar farming operations in the Beloved Country. Chairman Bahle Sibisi will step aside in favour of former ABSA deputy CEO, Louis van Zeuner, in a move calculated to ease the ongoing unhappiness of shareholders. And a lot of Tongaat Hulett land that was once earmarked for golf estates and packaging factories will now be transferred to third-party growers, many of them young black farmers. One of the other board members exiting stage left is local legend Brand Pretorius, ex-CEO of McCarthy, who has reached retirement age.

Comment: Tongaat Hulett have moved very quickly from shock and dismay to positive action. Their turnaround rather than their demise may well turn out to be the story of the year.

Nestlé is upping its scrutiny of the coffee beans it buys after finding that certain countries were supplying beans with levels of the weedkiller, and possible carcinogenic, glysophate that pushed the acceptable limits. Two of the countries in question were Indonesia and Brazil. Many countries have banned glysophate or are looking at doing so, and Bayer, which bought glysophate’s producer, Monsanto, is now facing billions of dollars’ worth of class actions. The $63bn dollar purchase turns out to have been a dicey deal for Bayer, particularly on the revelation that many of the researchers who found the chemical to be safe were in fact on Monsanto’s payroll. One of the issues facing countries like the US, which haven’t banned Roundup – the weedkiller whose active ingredient is glysophate – is that the chemical is just so darned good at what it does and that there are, at this point, few alternatives for industrial-scale agriculture.

Comment: Yes, and asbestos was also a hard one to fix. But we did it. Good job Nestlé: the private sector can also police threats to health like this one.

The leadership of SA’s banks and big businesses got together for a bit of a sit down with President Ramaphosa last week to hash things out and share some ideas on the spirit of give and take, and here’s what they had to say, in a nutshell: simplify visas for tourists and skilled personnel, give us some clarity re. land reform, and tell us what the thinking is on Eskom. Such actions, and others, they said, would lift their spirits, with business confidence currently at a twenty-year low, and more importantly create a more enticing set of prospects for investors. For his part, the Pres agreed that fast-track short-term reforms were necessary, and he emphasised the government’s continued commitment to reduce regulatory impediments to investment and growth.

Comment: An alliance between business and government to fix our current issues is a good start.