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Sometimes Woolies’ Good Business Journey is an overarching strategy for a retailer that is sustainably run and engaged with the communities it serves. Sometimes it’s a literal journey, like the one from their fulfilment centre to your house in one of its new electric panel vans, which it’s currently trialling in partnership with DSV and Everlectric. The electricity for the vans is obtained from renewable and sustainable sources including rooftop Solar PV installations, and where this is unavailable, they offset 100% of the electricity emissions via renewable energy certificates. In two months, the vehicles have prevented the production of almost 3,600kg of carbon dioxide. Woolies is the first of our great retailers to go this route, if you will, and more will doubtless follow. Shoprite, related, has more than doubled its photovoltaic capacity this year and plans to power over 25% of its operations via the strong African sun over the next five years.

Comment: The capacity of South Africa businesses to innovate their way out of crisis is one of our greatest assets as a country. The sustainable electrification of our supply chains may prove a case in point.

An operational update from Shoprite …. What’s that? Ah yes. Kind of like a trading update, but for quarterlies. We had to look it up ourselves. Anyway, the Group let it be known that it increased sales by +9.3% for the first quarter through September, with South African Supermarkets, excluding LiquorShop, coming in at +9.9%. Add the booze, and you’re looking at +11.6%. The quarter was much impacted by rebuilding efforts after July’s civil unrest; this notwithstanding, the Group managed to open 29 new stores: two Checkers, one Shoprite, eight Usave, 17 LiquorShops and one Petshop Science. In addition, it expects to conclude the purchase and the integration and rebranding of 111 Masscash Cash & Carry and Cambridge Food stores (including the adjacent liquor stores) by the end of the financial year. Dim spots are rarely found in the Shoprite universe, but one such is this great continent we call home: despite a solid performance in Zambia, sales outside of South Africa grew only +1.9%.

Comment: Shoprite believes it is well stocked for the holiday season, and on track to provide punters with the service they’ve come to expect from the Big Red one. As well they might be.

Black Friday is just around the corner; what’s everyone up to? First up Clicks, which kicked things off early with the launch of South Africa’s first Singles Day event on 11 November (11.11). The tradition started in China and has become a worldwide phenomenon, with limited stock being priced way down there and available for only one day. Clicks is also launching Black Friday deals every Friday for the duration. Pick n Pay is offering same-day delivery on Black Friday purchases for those who do their shopping using the asap! app. Most of the deals will be ‘Smart Price Black Friday deals’ – where punters who swipe their Smart Shopper card will get the best savings, as well as cashback in points. Massmart, who we seem to recall were early adopters of the shopping fest, has established that 77% of the surveyed Game shoppers will be looking to stock up on groceries and essentials, while 63% will be targeting appliances. “This is proof of how stretched the consumer budget is in 2021 and follows the trend we have seen with consumer shopping habits over the last 18 months where shopping has become about essential needs rather than luxury items and wants,” said Game marketing VP Katherine Madley.

Comment: Black Friday: a bellwether, if you will, for how the always canny South African consumer is feeling and is likely to spend come December.

French giant Carrefour is accelerating its turnaround strategy, planning on spending €3bn between 2022 and 2026 to step up digital commerce expansion and boost profits and aiming to add at least €600m to the bottom line thusly by 2026. How, you ask? E-commerce (boosted by express delivery and innovative services), the ramp-up of data and retail media, and the digitalisation of financial services. Easy. Amazon is also having a bit of a go in online retail: its e-commerce net sales will likely jump $16bn year on year and hit over $162bn in the year we are already calling 2022. In the UK, Tesco has attracted the ire (could we say insane frothing rage? Ed.) of anti-vaxxers, who object to the retail giant’s use of a double-vaccinated Father Christmas in its Christmas ads. They are threatening to boycott Tesco, which ironically will make it a safer place to shop. And not unrelated to the Woolies story, above, electric vehicle manufacturer Canoo, is moving its HQ to Bentonville, the hometown of retail behemoth Walmart, although no deal has been announced between the two.

Comment: It behoves us to occasionally sit back for a bit and contemplate the scale and change that has come upon this great industry we call home.

Results week for Astral Foods, when you put out the numbers and wait for all the analysts to narrow their eyes, suck shrewdly on their teeth, and tell you how they would have done it. Group revenue rose +14% to R15.86bn for the year through September, with profit declining -16% to R473.7m even as some of the poultry producer’s higher-margin lines recovered sales to pre-pandemic levels. It’s instructive to break down some of the factors which led to the decline in profit, which almost halved in the poultry division to R147m. Non-feed expenses in this division were impacted by outbreaks of a highly pathogenic avian influenza which weighed on the bottom line to the tune of R49m, looting cost the business R18m, COVID-19 produced ongoing costs of R14m, and disruptions to water and power supply dug a R27m hole in the P&L. And, says CEO Chris Schiutte, “The state of the SA economy has seen record high unemployment and severely constrained disposable income, which limits the ability to recover higher input costs placing pressure on the industry.”

Comment: Pestilence, whether human or avian, is not entirely avoidable. But some of the other factors we could work on.

In the US, Proctor & Gamble has launched new disability-friendly packaging for its Olay beauty line and will share the design on an open-source basis with the rest of the industry. To develop the new container’s lid, P&G liaised with people with various conditions, including dexterity issues, limb differences, joint pain and vision impairments. Next up, Heineken has put in its offer for local wine and spirits maker Distell Group Holdings for a very thirsty R38.4bn and will also be looking at acquiring a majority stake in the owner of Namibia Breweries, producer of Windhoek, and more importantly, of Windhoek Draught. This is going to put the wind up rivals Diageo and AB InBev in the region, make no mistake. Finally, Hinds Spices is running a competition to find the best Shisa Nyama in the country. The Chesa Champion campaign, which showcases Hinds’ proudly South African spices, will kick off in Soweto this month, which is what we call a good start since the best Shisa Nyamas in the country are, of course, to be found in eThekwini.

Comment: Spicy meat cooked to perfection on the coals, and an icy bottle of Windhoek Draught. Tastes like home.

Freshly minted new Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana let it be known in his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement last week that the dear old South African economy will grow by +5.1% in 2021, after contracting -6.4% under COVID and its associated lockdowns. This week, we await with bated breath the results of the deliberations of the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting, and by the time you read this we’ll probably know what’s what. Economists have been evenly divided between those who believe the Committee will hold on an increase and those who believe a 25-point hike is on the cards. For what it’s worth, we’re with the former group. Finally, with petrol hitting a record R19.54 a litre, an increase in the rate of inflation looks inevitable, as retailers will be charging more to cover their higher transportation and distribution costs. However, the adequate supply of food may mitigate any food price hikes over the festive season.

Comment: The burden of high inflation in an environment of slow economic growth is a perennial hazard here in the Beloved Country.