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Wrapped up in our COVID catchup this week is a sneaky little trading update from Dis-Chem, which has let it be known that for the 24 weeks to 15 August, revenue grew +8.8% to R11.7bn. A fair chunk of that came through online retail, which positively vaulted an astounding +344% during the period. Sales from smaller convenience formats were also up by +16.4%, but mall sales were down -7.8% – all of which spell an easily-legible story of how the pandemic has changed South African shopping habits. Also COVID-adjacent comes the news that Clicks has joined Shoprite and Pick n Pay in enabling punters to send mobile vouchers for essential hygiene items, healthcare services and over-the-counter medicines to friends and family in need. Importantly, these vouchers can also be used to access primary healthcare services in any of 195 Clicks Clinics across South Africa.

Comment: One of the very few bright spots during this pandemic has been the agility of our retailers in adapting to its challenges.

Who doesn’t need some good news these days? Put your hand down, Bezos. We know we do, which is why we turn to the eagerly awaited news of this year’s winner of Shoprite’s Championship Boerewors Competition. Aaaand from out of leftfield comes Delano Jasper, 18, of Wellington ... that can’t be right! But it is. Jasper falls squarely within Generation Z and is a first-timer in this landmark event of the Worsmeister’s calendar. Reading between the lines, though, he comes from a long line of sausagesmiths: “It’s the first time I entered this competition, so I really had no expectations,” he says. “But we had a family challenge to make the finals this year.” Also, his mom Yvonne Blaauw was the 2018 winner. As of the 11th of this month, Jasper’s wors will be in fridges in Checkers’ across the Beloved Country, and wherever he goes, he will go in brand new Toyota Fortuner.

Comment: Great work, that young man! And the iconic South African retailer that made his success possible.

Is Walmart really super-committed to its investment in Massmart? Mitch Slape is tired of you asking. “I really look forward to the day when that’s not a question anymore,” he says, pointing to the R4bn Daddy Walbucks lent Massmart in June should it need the extra cash to get over the worst of COVID. And to the talent he’s bringing in to help things along – talent which now includes Walmart veteran Martin Halle, out of Argentina, as VP in charge of Massmart’s supply chain, an area in which he has a particular talent. All of this emerged at the interims presentation last week, at which it was also announced that sales were down -9.7% for the half-year through June, despite a double-digit growth in online, and that the business had turned in a R1.2bn loss, substantially due to closing costs for DionWired. For a closer look at the numbers, click here.

Comment: Rampant at home in the US, Walmart has energy and cash to burn for the Massmart turnaround. We do hope it works.

In Ireland, SPAR has become the first grocer in the country to roll out mobile self-checkout in two of its strategically located stores. It’s a JV with supplier BWG, who is using Scan, Pay & Go checkout technology, developed by MishiPay, for the endeavour. Still on SPAR, the business has added its first e-vehicle to the delivery fleet in Switzerland, transporting food products emission-free and almost silently from the central warehouse through vertiginous valleys and rolling pastures and past rushing mountain streams and snow-peaked alps to SPAR stores in the Appenzell region and Thurgau, on 180km per charge. To Ghana now, where SPAR International is adding to its global total of 13,300 stores another 17, which it is converting from existing supermarkets in Accra, Ghana’s capital. This marks the 10th African country with access to the delights of the red, white and green.

Comment: Powerful stuff SPAR!

IMPERIAL Logistics has mentioned that it wishes to double the size of its consumer and healthcare business over the rest of Africa. Known as Market Access, the division is light on heavy assets like trucks. It sources, markets, distributes and sells healthcare and consumer goods in more than 20 countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Namibia, Mozambique and Ghana. It currently turns over in excess of R12bn annually, growing +18% in the last FY. Market Access marks a bright spot in understandably subdued results: while revenue for the Group was up +4% to R46.38bn, operating profit declined -40% to R1.46bn, with international logistics taking the biggest hit. CEO Mohammed Akoojee says that one of the biggest lessons from COVID-19 is that supply chains are not as robust as people thought.

Comment: Another lesson is that some businesses are more inventive than we imagined.

A brief one from RCL FOODS, that iconic South African business formerly known as Rainbow Chicken, which turned in a so-so set of results last week. Group revenue was up a pleasing +7.4% to R27.8bn for the year through June, but the business turned in a loss of R959m, up (or rather, down) from a loss of R183.9m last year. This on the back of write-downs of R1.5bn to reflect the pressure on the business and its customers from COVID-19. This is a state of affairs the worthies at RCL expect will persist for some time. But being RCL, they’re looking ahead: having diversified out of chicken some years ago when the writing on the wall of that embattled industry started to become visible, they’re looking at additional expansion into e-commerce, particularly in the area of pet food, as a promising area of growth once the dust settles, or even before.

Comment: These are the times that test the model, and power positive change.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) jumped to a four-month high of +1.9%, up from +0.5% in June, with prices of food products, beverages and tobacco products at +3.2%, and transport equipment at +8.3%. CPI, as you will recall, was also up, but this does not mean the end of the Reserve Bank’s current cycle of rate cuts, the Government’s best instrument to put some vim into consumer spending, at a time when the Bank expects a reduction in GDP of -7.3%, its worst decline since the Great Depression. And finally, speaking of the Bank, reports of the demise of “Teflon” Tito Mboweni are greatly exaggerated: he is not for the axe, he insists, as the scuttlebutt had it last week.

Comment: Ups and downs, ups and downs.