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Starting the new year off with a bang, Woolies have announced that embattled CEO Ian Moir will be stepping down in mid Feb, handing over the reins to Roy Baggatini, a South African who has just done a stint as President of Levi Strauss Americas. We still fondly recall the years when Moir could do no wrong, turning around Country Road in Aus, and then leading Woolworths on its Good Business Journey and entrenching the business as a beacon of innovation and efficiency. Then came David Jones. Woolworths Holdings chairperson Hubert Brody is excited about the new hire. “Roy has extensive operational, management and turnaround experience in global consumer and retail markets, which will prove invaluable as we continue to navigate the structural changes taking place in the retail sector and the challenges particular to our Group,” he says.

Comment: Cheers Mr Moir, and good luck in your next endeavour.

Shoprite are upping their game as the primary healthcare provider of choice – or at least of convenience – with the piloting of a Smart Clinic facility at the in-store Medirite pharmacy of Checkers Hyper Parow. What’s that, you ask, puzzled. Simple: it’s a clinic which offers an array of basic healthcare services making use of digital health technology such as Udoc and telehealth, which connects trained nursing professionals to a network of doctors. The nurse captures all the necessary patient data and (if needed) facilitates a video consultation with a doctor. The doctor, in turn, uses the info provided to make an assessment, provide a treatment plan, order special investigations or refer a patient if needed. “The cost-effective Smart Clinic model enables MediRite to increase its value offering to customers whilst making primary healthcare, for which there is such great demand in South Africa, more affordable and accessible,” explains MediRite GM Jaco Engelbrecht.

Comment: What’s the thinking here? Shoprite has always aspired to be a one-stop shop for everything from banking to healthcare. Another step on the ladder.

Seems like some difficult decisions are being made over at Massmart, where as many as 34 DionWired and Masscash stores face closure, at the possible cost to the business of 1,440 jobs. This as part of a store optimisation project, which has revealed some of the underperformers in the Group and which will no doubt go some way to returning the business to the sort of profitability deemed acceptable by shareholders. The business has commenced a potential store closure consultation with organised labour and other stakeholders. In other Massmart news, a technical glitch saw some Makros closing for the morning last Thursday; normal service was promptly restored.

Comment: This is going to be a year of close scrutiny for Massmart under the new-broom stewardship of turnaround artist Mitch Slape. Pretty sure there’ll be better news to tell when Auld Lang Syne rings in our ears once more.

Pick n Pay are aiming to reduce food waste in their supply chain to the tune of 50% by the once-distant year of 2025, working with 10 other large retailers globally and 20 of their own biggest suppliers in an initiative they’re calling 10x20x30, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3. As you’ve noticed, however, in PnP’s case this is five years ahead of schedule. “We are getting more accurate in our procurement and replenishment, and we are steadily reducing the amount of food which goes to waste in our stores,” explains Chairman Ackerman the Younger. “Any food that has passed its sell-by date, but not its expiry date, is donated.” Woolies, in the meantime, is going all out on sustainable packaging for its tomatoes, selling them in 65% recycled kraft board trays with all the info printed thereon, rather than on sticky labels, and covered with clarified polypropylene lids of the sort that have revolutionized their herb, micro-herb and sprout punnets.

Comment: A cracking start to the year, those retailers. This is how we’re going to get it done.

Rumblings from up north are that Aldi is poised to purchase French discounter Leader Price from its parent company Casino. Leader Price has over 550 stores in France, and another 80-odd in the Francophone world, including Africa and the Caribbean. The business is looking to deleverage in a challenging business environment, so win ‘forward slash’ win. Heading west to Brexitannia, Tesco apparently won Christmas, lifting sales a stupendous +0.1% amid, you guessed it, tough conditions, to beat out its hapless rivals. And it did top its previous record to serve 890,000 customers in a single hour of trading on 23 December, so there’s also that. Further west now, to the increasingly deranged lost continent of Don, where Walmart has just unveiled the incredibly sinisterly-named Alphabot, an automated 20,000 square-foot warehouse where robot carts retrieve items and deliver them to employees at a picking station, who then pack and deliver the order to customers’ cars in the parking lot.

Comment: Presumably, they’re looking at getting rid of the pickers, too. Won’t it be a lovely world when the only humans in it are either consumers or shareholders?

In 2018 – and we remain shocked that we didn’t report on this – Kellogg withdrew the original Rice Krispies from the South African market, replacing the beloved, if highly-aerated, breakfast staple with something they were calling ‘Vanilla Rice Krispies’, that went down with the punters just about as well as Vanilla Coke had in an earlier age of the world. This adulterated version contained more locally-grown grains than rice, and a lot more sugar, to, apparently “enhance the crispiness”. Now, you will be (semi) pleased to know, they’re bringing back the original, although they’re importing it from the UK now, as presumably Kellogg South Africa have in their folly lost the knowledge of the ancients. And the UK variety (at a higher price point) will still have to share the shelves with (choke) Vanilla Rice Krispies.

Comment: If it ain’t broke…

P&G, who know a thing or two about making a bob or two from the removal of unwanted hair, are buying, for an undisclosed amount, the entirety of the shareholding of Billie, a subscription service for shaving and body care products for women. Billie sells razors, shaving cream, body wash and body lotion, and have built a reputation on their commitment to eliminating the ‘pink tax’ on women’s shaving products, which are generally priced at a premium to those for men. The Billie portfolio will complement P&G’s existing lines Venus, Braun and joy. A couple years back, you may recall, rival Unilever bought the Dollar Shave Club, another subscription service, for a cool billion bucks, and last year Schick and Wilkinson owner Edgewell forked over $1.37bn for the acquisition of Harry’s, ah, erm, shaving subscription service.

Comment: &G have been coining it off razors since they bought Gillette in 2005. Why on earth would they stop now?

Not a great start to a critical year, to be honest. Factory output for the month of November fell -3.6%, almost triple the decline predicted by a representative sample of economists, and the sixth consecutive drop. And last Wednesday, the World Bank revised its 2020 growth outlook for the Beloved Country downwards, to 0.9% from 1.5%, although it did say we could hit an average of 1.4% the following year provided President Ramaphosa’s economic reforms take hold. In the meantime internal constraints – we’re looking at you Eskom – and weak external demand in an uncertain global economy are likely to stretch us further. Then on Thursday, the Sacci Business Confidence Index (BCI), which is a good indicator of fixed investment and thus future economic growth, averaged its lowest level in 34 years. And all this as we wait as Moody’s ponders our credit rating.

Comment: It’s rough. But eventual recovery begins with diagnosis, however grim.