Bringing some excitement to the arguably staid world of road transportation this week is Woolworths, which has just announced that it intends to roll out – if that’s the expression – a fleet of delivery vehicles of which 70% will be electric. This follows the global example of such businesses as UPS and Amazon and will save the retailer (and the planet) an estimated 700,000kg in emissions annually (the average van emits 150g – 190g of CO₂ per kilometre, so you do the math). “This latest investment in electric panel vans, enables us to continue to grow our online business and deliver the Woolies difference, but with a lower carbon footprint,” says head of online and mobile Liz Hillock. The initiative is a partnership between Woolies, transport and logistics outfit DSV, and electric vehicle and charging technology crew Everlectric, and is aligned with the Group’s goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Where it’s unable to charge using renewables, it will buy Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) which certify that the power it draws from the national grid is in fact green.

Comment: Home delivery, with its relatively short ranges and smaller vehicles, is an ideal platform for the development of this sort of approach to logistics.

Once a perk, now increasingly a necessity, petrol points are hard currency for members of Pick n Pay’s Smart Shopper loyalty programme. Penny pinching punters have put down R50m worth of points at the pumps over the last couple of years, indicating both that they need the bucks and are apprised of the value of a meaningful benefit. Smart Shopper has been around for ten years (can you believe it? They grow up so fast…) and paired up with the thrillingly lower-cased bp ten years ago to provide members with over R20 in points on their card to spend it on petrol. Currently, you will be shocked to know, over 3.7 million members have over R20 unspent. “Pick n Pay’s Smart Shopper programme now has over 9.5 million active customers and the company has noticed an increase in the number of customers redeeming their rewards both in-store and at the pump during the pandemic as the economic crisis hit,” says Pick n Pay’s head of marketing Melissa Hanley. Pick n Pay is not alone in this: according to the Q1 2022 Global Loyalty and Rewards Market Survey, more consumers have joined loyalty programmes during COVID compared to the previously; almost 75% of consumers used loyalty programmes in 2021.

Comment: As a relatively early adopter of loyalty programmes, Pick n Pay is well-positioned to both receive and dispense the benefits in these tough times.

This just in: SPAR reported yesterday that Group turnover rose by +5.2% to R67.6bn for the six months through March, with HEPS, a reliable indicator of profitability, climbing 3.7%. More on this next week, but in the meantime, read our snappy little summary of the results here. Next up, Boxer Superstores, discount superstar in the Pick n Pay firmament, has appointed RELEX Solutions, provider of unified retail planning solutions, to implement forecasting and replenishment for their stores and DCs. Before the appointment, Boxer had done all of this in house; as it grows it needs a specialised system to support its rapidly scaling needs. Over at Checkers, the retailer is advancing its commitment to ensure that 100% of its own-brand packaging is reusable, recyclable and compostable and that it contains on average 30% recycled material content by 2025. Recent or forthcoming packaging innovations include a recyclable box for rotisserie chicken, and the replacement of plastic sandwich punnets with Kraft carton wedges. It’s also putting photovoltaic installations on the roofs of three more supermarkets in the Eastern Cape. Finally, Shoprite is opening its second standalone Medirite Plus pharmacy in the Western Cape at the Checkers Centre in Stellenbosch, where it will offer an affordable and accessible product range that includes health, beauty, baby and skincare brands.

Comment: Pharmacy remains a significant if contested frontier for growth. Are suppliers truly getting onboard with the drive to standalone health and wellness? Let us know what you think in our comments section.

Walmart has been the largest retailer in the US since 1990. Well enjoy your time in the sun big guy, because this is unlikely to be the case past 2024, when Amazon is predicted to take over. Amazon should claim 14.9% of the US retailer market share by 2026, while Walmart's is forecasted to drop to 12.7%, down from 13.2% in 2021. This is not a head scratcher: e-commerce grew +15.2% in 2021, and this is Amazon’s playground. Moving on, to crime, which is by no means a local phenomenon: 25 of the world’s largest retailers saw the apprehension of 200,000 shoplifters and dishonest employees in 2021, and recovered over $240m from these miscreants, according to the Jack L. Hayes International, Inc. 34th Annual Retail Theft Survey. Fun fact, Jack L. Hayes was himself a talented shoplifter who built his original fortune on pilfered Gillette razor blades before going straight. OK, not true. Finally, Aldi’s arthropod-themed Cuthbert the Caterpillar Cake has won its initially bruising legal fight against Mark’s & Spencer’s Colin the Caterpillar, to which it bears a striking – even suspicious – resemblance. Cuthbert is back on the shelves after an amicable settlement between the larval adversaries and their parent companies.

Comment: Whether it concerns shoplifters, aggressive competitors or copycat[erpillar]s, retail truly is a battlefield.

A shake up might be on the cards for Unilever with the arrival on the board as a non-executive director of activist investor Nelson Peltz, who is widely credited with engineering the turnaround of Unilever rival P&G. Pelz runs the New York-based hedge fund Trian, which with a 1.5% stake, is Unilever’s fourth-largest shareholder. Shares in Unilever have slumped below even their 2020 COVID lows this year and are still down 30% from 2019’s all-time high, after the failed acquisition of some of GSK’s consumer healthcare arm. “Most of his actions will count as ‘back to basics’: investing in innovation, fixing incentive schemes, accelerating the pace of acquisitions and disposals, etc,” says one analyst. The punters seem to like the development too: shares in the London-listed Unilever jumped 7% on the news. At P&G, Pelz proposed dividing the business into standalone operating units, which according to some, might make more sense at Unilever.

Comment: A great business in need of some fresh thinking? Hopefully the greyed head of Mr Pelz contains some of what is necessary.

Marking World Hunger Day last week, Kellogg’s has announced that it is donating food to serve 46,700 school children’s breakfast every school day across South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Basic Education. “Kellogg’s is grateful to be able to play our part to alleviate hunger at schools and enable an environment conducive to learning and improving a child’s behaviour,” says corporate affairs director Zandile Mposelwa. Heading north, an Asian beer brought to market by Heineken has become the fastest-growing beer brand in Africa’s largest economy. Driven by the increasing success of Tiger beer, the volume of the company’s premium brands jumped 30% in Nigeria in 2021. Tiger is patchily available here in the Beloved Country, where perhaps not coincidentally, SAB’s iconic Lion Lager seems to be making a comeback. Finally – bit of a slow news week among the manufacturers – Nestlé informs us, on the occasion of World Milk Day, that just over 75% of the global population consume dairy products.

Comment: The widespread adoption of a food group intended by evolution for the nourishment of the very young is one of the oddest practices of our species.

Amid the gloom and fear of the economic news during this troubled period, we missed a spark of hope. Ratings agency S&P Global revised its outlook last week for SA’s credit rating from stable to positive, the first improvement since our ratings began dropping in 2011, reaching sub-investment grade at the start of the COVID pandemic. This, says Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso, is partially as a result of the hard work that has been done (often at great political risk) in getting government expenditure under control, and in convincing investors that we’re not the credit risk they thought we were. “When buried at the coal face of dealing with SA’s challenges, we sometimes feel overwhelmed,” she says. “Taking a step back and seeing it through foreigners’ eyes is a healthy sanity check. We are making progress, but we must redouble our efforts.” She remains concerned – as we all should be – about the threat of global economic instability to our economy and our social contract. “We have a storm coming and we will need to be prepared,” she warns.

Comment: Betting against South Africa’s resilience has never been a winning proposition.