South Africans spend around R8bn a year on pet food and accessories, and you know that Shoprite is going to have some of that. The business has opened 30 Petshop Science stores over the last 12 months and is on track to have 50 trading by June, supported by a comprehensive digital offering which obviates the need to schlep ten kilo sacks of crumbles through the store on a Saturday morning. And while Shoprite is – as is so often the case these days – the first supermarket brand to market in this category, it is by no means alone. Woolies, which has been known to sell Wagyu steaks and rotisserie chickens to the owners of discerning pets, is also upping its offering in the sector, while Pick n Pay has expanded from the bare bones offering of the past to a range that includes more premium and raw food options, and dietary supplements from small local suppliers. It also has the free-to-join Smart Shopper Pet Club, an extension of its popular loyalty programme.

Comment: A robust, growing, and increasingly competitive category.

Musina, where we once enjoyed a Christmas in the mining hospital with malaria, is the Gateway to the North, and, to mix a metaphor, the Musina Mall is the jewel in its crown. A jewel, as it happens, of some lustre these days: Total turnover grew a whacking +34% YoY in 2022, ending +23% higher than pre-COVID trading in 2019. Footfall increased +6% last year, and visits topped 900,000 in December for the first time. What’s up with that? The Mall’s location, at just 10 clicks from the Zimbabwean border (which formally opened again last September), as well as the completion of the N1 ring road on which the facility is located – 100km and 200km respectively away from its two closest competitors, and firmly within the mineral-rich Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone. Checkers and Shoprite anchor the 35,000m² of retail space, where you’ll also find Woolworths, Clicks, Dis-Chem, Mr Price, The Foschini Group, Ackermans, Truworths, and Pep. It has also enjoyed some recent additions. “The improvements to Musina Mall build on its unparalleled convenience for its immediate community and many customers from over the Beitbridge border in Zimbabwe and beyond,” says Paul Gerard, MD of co-owner Flanagan & Gerard.

Comment: Where would we be without the malls on which our retail culture is founded?

Shoprite again, this time listing on its fourth stock exchange, the Generation Y-themed AX2, where it joins fellow retailers Woolworths and Mr Price, a purveyor of inexpensive garments. Shoprite’s other listings are on the JSE, the Namibian Stock Exchange (NSX) and the Lusaka Securities Exchange, but this one is way cooler. To Woolies now, where former Deloitte Africa CEO Lwazi Bam has joined the board as an independent non-executive director, to keep things all buttoned down and fiscally responsible. Next, Massmart, which has fired 284 Saccawu-affiliated workers who participated in unprotected strikes at Makro stores across the country on Black Friday last year. The two parties, you will recall, are still butting heads over a wage increase. Finally, Checkers is quite literally putting its money behind its Sixty60 delivery offering, which has introduced a ‘service guarantee’, giving punters their R35 delivery fee back if certain requirements aren’t met – like orders arriving 30 minutes late or less than 80% of first-choice products being in the order. The refund will automatically be paid into shoppers’ “wallet balance” straight after the delivery is complete, and punters will be given 7 days to spend it before it disappears into the ether.

Comment: Bold and confident, and a clever differentiator in a sometimes chaotic space.

A hop across the border, now, to Botswana, where local hero Choppies is taking on a behemoth of the global professional services industry, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who it is suing for losses the Choppies directors faced when the share was suspended from trading on the JSE and Botswana stock exchanges, after PWC refused to sign off on the 2018 accounts without doing a forensic audit first, causing the stock to tank. But it’s not just about the money, says CEO Ramachandran Ottapathu, it’s about their reputation. A long and bitter fight seems likely to ensue. Next, to the US, where Walmart is going all-in on robotics and automation. In its Brooksville DC, the automated operation covers about 24,000m² and will eventually expand to 72,000m², for double the throughput. By the end of this year, about a third of Walmart stores will be serviced by automated DCs; within three years, that will increase to +65%, with a -20% reduction in the unit cost of moving goods.

Comment: We are living through a technological revolution that makes the industrial revolution look like the invention of sharp sticks.

Here’s a business never before featured in these pages: South Bakels, which earns its crust (if you’ll forgive us) by producing and distributing a wide range of premixes and specialised ingredients to various sectors in the bakery industry. South Bakels has just acquired, for an undisclosed sum, the entirety of Orley Foods, a Cape Town-based supplier of sweet ingredient solutions, from Kerry Ingredients. Orley’s products include, but are most definitely not limited to chocolate chips, chunks, slabs, spreads, and fillings; sugar and syrup-based sauces and spreads; ice cream coatings, syrups and ripple sauces; and… well you get the picture. According to South Bakels MD Gerhard Grobbelaar, the addition of Orley Foods offers new and complementary product solutions to the existing product range, benefiting both current and future customers.

Comment: Our industry is a huge machine with many moving parts – the likes of Orley and South Bakels might not be household names, but they’re as important to the consumer as any of the big manufacturers.

In the US, Johnson & Johnson has undertaken to pay $8.9bn to resolve all 60,000 cancer lawsuits tied to its talc-based powders, which it has already withdrawn from the market. Under the terms of a title 11 deal, J&J will pay $6.5bn to resolve current and future ovarian cases, provide $2bn for current and future mesothelioma cases, and $400m to states who’ve sued the business for failing to warn consumers about the health risks. Back on these shores, dairy outfit Lactalis has forked out R140m in a new evaporator dryer powder plant facility at its cheese manufacturing plant in Bonnievale. The plant will remove water from milk to produce a dry powder that will last longer, travel easier and may be used for a number of products. Moving abroad again, L’Oréal is buying Australian luxury beauty brand Aesop from Brazilian personal care company Natura & Co, for the princely amount of $2.5bn some change. Natura owns The Body Shop globally and original network-marketing brand Avon.

Comment: A huge deal for J&J, which may yet help the business avoid a still greater torrent of lawsuits that might otherwise have ensued.

First up, the S&P Global South Africa Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data showed that business activity in March declined to 49.7 from 50.5 in February, victim to ongoing blackouts, and inflationary pressures arising from exchange rate weakness, higher fuel costs and weak supply chain conditions. On a marginally brighter note, S&P notes that business sentiment lifted slightly for the month. And the SARB has established that the upwards phase in the South African business cycle started in May 2020, which is nice. Not unrelated, President Ramaphosa has suggested the convening of a national logistics crisis committee, hopefully of greater longevity than the Eskom State of Disaster, aimed at addressing the desperate concerns of South Africa’s largest exporters, who rely on the country’s embattled road, rail and port infrastructure. “We need to take urgent measures to resolve the logistics backlog that continues to undermine economic growth,” intoned the headmaster.

Comment: One way of looking at things is that the excellence we see in our own sector – and many others, like banking and telecommunications – is available to electricity generation, infrastructure, and employment if it’s given a chance.