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Nice work from the Big Red One in the last six months of the ‘19, with sales growth across the Group up +7%. The big performer was liquor, which grew by around +20% for the period. Supermarket sales here in the Beloved Country grew +9.8%, excellent considering the constraints of the current round, and the low base from which they grew notwithstanding, but elsewhere in Africa the picture was not so peachy, with turnover down -3.1%, as a result of currency depreciations and major deflation in Angola. Incidentally, Shoprite liquor rival Tops at SPAR grew sales around +17.6% for the period – not a sign, say analysts, that worried South Africans are turning to the bottle, rather that the majors are taking a large chunk of market share out of worried independents, who may well be turning to the bottle as a result; we just don’t know. In other Shoprite news, asset manager Coronation has doubled its share in the business, taking it to just north of 10% and making it the largest institutional shareholder next to the PIC.

Comment: A solid update from Shoprite, which seems to have recovered nicely from its Gauteng DC issues in the earlier part of the year.

Another strong trading update, this one from Clicks, which saw turnover rise +9.9% to R12.9bn for the 20 weeks to 12 January. UPD, as has long been the case, was a particularly strong performer, with turnover up 13.1%, and total managed turnover – a combination of wholesale turnover and turnover managed for bulk distribution clients – growing +10.2%. Total retail sales grew +7.9%, or +4.7% on a like-store basis, and health and beauty sales, including Clicks, Claire’s, GNC and the Body Shop, grew +9%, or a comparable +5.4%. (CEO) Mr (Vikesh) Ramsunder? “Our wide range of gifting and value offering, supported by the convenience of the Clicks chain’s extensive retail and pharmacy footprint, ensured that we maintained our robust sales momentum of recent years and sustained volume growth.” Couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Oddly, though, the punters didn’t exactly do handsprings, with a -4% drop in the share price on the news.

Comment: Clicks’ long-demonstrated ability to coin it in an adverse market by flogging the little luxuries to stressed consumers remains untouched though.

Keeping up with the Shoprites this week are Pick n Pay, who are adding to their family of value-added services the ability for punters to book airline and bus tickets. The Big Blue are working with online travel business Travelstart, which digitally reaches millions of consumers every year. The Pick n Pay offering gives them one more channel for what they provide. For Pick n Pay, the drawcard is apparently more convenience for their customers and one more reason to pace the gleaming aisles. While Shoprite may have been quicker off the mark with some of the services they offer, Pick n Pay has been no slouch in this arena either, and in fact has been something of a pioneer in the field of financial services. Remember those Nedbank kiosks? The till point transaction? Then last year, their collab with Tymebank, to which a million punters have already signed up.

Comment: There has long been a school of thought that all retailers, with their payment terms of 90 days to suppliers, effectively function as banks.

In its bid to own Absolutely Everything™, Walmart has opened a meatpacking plant in Georgia, where it will cut and package house brand steaks and roasts for the 500 Walmart stores in the region. The facility will be run by an outside service provider. The idea for Walmart is to drive down the costs of production and sell a better product in store, while breaking the death grip four major producers have on 85% of the market in the US. Thinking along similar lines, rival Costco, which prides itself on the $4.99 roasted chicken, has done something similar with poultry, in Nebraska. In the UK, a couple of bidders are apparently interested in buying Steinhoff’s European retail unit, which could be yours for a cool €4bn. And Asda – oh, happy day – are joining forces with Unilever and Kellogg in a sustainability concept store in Leeds, where punters will be able to fill their own Tupperwares with Rice Krispies and PG Tips tea, while giving feedback on how they’re enjoying the experience.

Comment: Excessive packaging is truly one of the great evils of the industrial age. Great that these businesses are beginning, slowly to address it.

Mondial potatoes – a varietal ideal for the manufacture of slap chips – have been hard to come by of late, after a longstanding deal between local seed grower Wesgrow and (we guarantee these words have never been seen in these pages before today) Dutch potato breeder HZPC Holland fell afoul of the Competition Commission. The comish accused the companies of anti-competitive behaviour, excluding local growers from the thriving Mondial market, in 2017, four years after their 20-year arrangement expired. Now the two have struck a deal with the Commission that will see deliveries resume at the backdoors of greasy spoons all over the Beloved Country. For the next three years, Wesgrow will supply seedlings to whoever wants them – but only once. Thereafter, they will have to send their samples to ancestry.com, sequence the necessary genes and produce the waxy beauties under their own steam.

Comment: A fascinating glimpse into the lifecycle of the Frankenspud, and into the dark world of breeders’ rights and varietals.

A busy week for the Competition Commission (see above) against which I&J are making a loud complaint. The Commission accused I&J and Karan Beef of dividing markets with an agreement that the latter would stop selling processed beef products, like hamburger patties and boerewors, to retail and food service businesses, and instead supply them only to I&J. Problem is, the timeframe for this alleged collusion was between June 2000 and March 2015; the Commission brought the complaint to the Tribunal only in October 2018 – or more than three years after the original offence ended – for which, by the way, Karan paid a R2.7m admission of guilt. The Commission are looking for an amount 53 times that from I&J.

Comment: Anticompetitive behaviour seems endemic to our industry. Tough to make a buck these days, we suppose.

Last week, the hoary sages over at StatsSA let it be known that consumer price index (CPI) inflation had ticked up a natz, coming in at 4% year-on-year for the month of December after November’s low of 3.6%, driven thither by higher fuel inflation. But let us leave, for now, the sorrows of the present economy, and head for the twinkling slopes, the rocky buttresses, the teeming streets of Davos, where not long ago our very own Tito Mboweni rubbed shoulders with the great and good, as he has been doing on and off since 1991. “If you come here with the hope of signing big investment deals you’ve come to the wrong place,” he observes. “At Davos we exchange ideas, debate issues, have conversations and make friendships which might in the long term translate into investment.” Well, that’s nice. And liberty chair Jaco Maree said that without the hype of Ramaphoria, our team was able to get down to business, having discussions with, among others, investors keen to explore South Africa’s potential in renewables.

Comment: Silver lining there, from which we will one day produce some solar energy.