A trading statement from SPAR, who have let it be known that sales grew +5.4% YoY for the 18 weeks through January, for a total of R39.79bn. SPAR Southern Africa grew sales +4.9%, and its core SPAR business +6.1%, with same store sales up by +4.6%. This is par for the course or slightly better than its domestic rivals, but falls short of the performance punters have come to expect from the Jolly Green One, something SPAR attributes in part to their liquor division, which grew sales only +4.5% in an increasingly competitive environment. Build it – much like Massmart’s Builder’s divisions – also disappointed, with sales declining -3.4% for the period. Business was up by +0.7% in Ireland, but down -1.9% in Switzerland.

Comment: Like every other South African retailer, SPAR has begun to feel the bite of a truly awful economy. And yet, somehow, things seem even worse in Europe for retail right now.

Spazas everywhere are achieving new levels of efficiency and – one hopes – profitability thanks to a R25m investment by the SA SME Fund in A2Pay, provider of technology solutions to small businesses, and in this case, of high-tech tills to informal or independent retailers. The hardware in question scans barcoded items, and can be used to sell airtime, bus tickets and electricity. Their quick buttons are able to capture non-barcode items like hot food, chips, loose cigarettes and sweets, and the system that backs them up comes pre-loaded with 15,000 barcoded items. And that’s not all: the system works out the cost price of items and gross profits and notifies retailers of their top-selling items by quantity, by profit and by value, giving them weekly and monthly stock and turnover reports, including gross profit reports. The tills are themselves only the tip of the iceberg: A2Pay will be distributing the SME Fund’s R25m in the form of loans to 1,500 spazas nationwide.

Comment: Access to capital is perhaps the greatest challenge to small business. An excellent initiative.

The Mad Max future, that is, rather than the shinier one with flying cars and personal robots. Although it doesn’t necessarily have to be an either/or. Anyway, in this future, Harrods, the legendarily posh department store, is preventing its staff from wearing masks when dealing with customers. Not coincidently, Harrods is a big attraction to visitors from China. Harrods management are concerned that the wearing of masks may cause “risk of spreading further anxiety”. The sort of anxiety, no doubt, that would cause certain customers to take their renminbi elsewhere. Also in the UK, Tesco are in hot water for preventing competitors from opening stores in close proximity to their own properties by means of “restrictive covenants” to land sales – which allow former land and property owners to dictate how land may be used once it is sold. Sound familiar? And Aldi shoppers are apparently concerned that superfast self-checkouts might lead to job losses.

Comment: Further proof, if any were needed, that shoppers are often a little more evolved on the moral continuum than the businesses that serve them.

So more on that PepsiCo acquisition we hinted at so broadly last week. The Competition Commission have decreed that the $1.7bn acquisition of Pioneer Foods may go ahead, with conditions, notably, that there be a moratorium on retrenchments and that the transaction include a R1.6bn BEE component. Also on the Comish’s wish list is “significant investment in the operations of the merged entity, the agricultural sector and the establishment of an enterprise development fund”, although the nature of this fund remains unspecified. The deal is the second biggest such purchase by PepsiCo since 2010, and its biggest in sub-Saharan Africa. One possible bump in the road to commercial bliss for the happy couple is the UK Competition Authorities – Pioneer have significant holdings in that benighted market, remember, and the authorities there want to make sure that the deal won’t mess with the overall cereal market too badly.

Comment: There’s many a slip, as our old English teacher was fond of remarking.

Nestlé let it be known last Thursday that their growth expectations were lower than they’d like and that they wouldn’t be hitting their 2020 numbers, but that they were bullish – ironically – about their future prospects in a meatless world; which is to say that they’re betting heavily on plant-based meat and fish substitutes to breathe new life into their prepared dishes division. Such products are already achieving double-digit growth for the Swiss giant, and represent a once-in-a-generation opportunity – their words, not ours – to regenerate that aspect of the business. This year, they will be launching a meatless tuna salad.

Comment: Commendable stuff. Meat production at the current scale is demonstrably bad for the environment, and its consumption at the current rate is not great for us. Interesting to see how the tuna salad goes down though.

The State of the Nation speech last week was never going to be a silver bullet for what ails South Africa, and so it proved: ratings agency Fitch, which downgraded us to junk status back in 2017, was not having it, for example. “The difficulty of addressing competing priorities of reducing inequality, raising growth, improving public finances and containing populism and infighting within the ANC will continue to limit the government’s ability to take more decisive steps to accelerate growth,” they said, and frankly that sounds about right. The next big economic milestone is of course ‘The Budget’, with Minister Mboweni looking for an extra R150bn in savings in the next three years, with government salaries the obvious place to start. The Minister also has to get the money rolling into the coffers, and there’s rising belief that another VAT hike might be the most efficient way to do it.

Comment: Vasbyt, South Africa. It’s one thing we’re really good at.