Pick n Pay subsidiary Boxer Superstores are finalists in three categories of the African Access Business Awards, South Africa’s business Oscars. The nominations are for the Customer Focus Award, the Marketing Excellence Award and the Top Performing Businessman of The Year Award, for which Marketing Director Andrew Mills has received the nod. Nice work from a business which leads at the lower-end of the market where others are just beginning to follow.

As Walmart battles the local competition boys to get in, Pick n Pay battles the Aussie ones to get out. Reading between the lines, though, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Metcash (Aus) has received more than 200 expressions of interest for the 80 Franklins supermarkets it has agreed to acquire from the Big Blue, many of these coming from the independent supers PnP would end up selling the stores to should the deal not go through.

Just months after the launch of its smart card, Pick n Pay has signed up 3.1 million ‘smart shoppers’ against a target of 3 million for the first year. The cerebral fragments of polyvinyl chloride were used in just over 50% of sales, said Mr Badminton at the Group’s AGM just the other day, and might account for the slight uptick in sales for the first three months of the jolly old FY.

A task team from Adcock Ingram has been working tirelessly for 18 months to clear more than 4,000 medicine registrations with the Medicines Control Council, which apparently needs some assistance in these things. More than 250 registrations from Adcock Ingram alone are still outstanding, in a bad way, including registrations for much-needed ARVs and first-to-market generics which could lighten the burden of ill-health for poorer South Africans.

This sustainable sourcing business leads one down some lesser trodden paths, that’s for sure. As part of the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) initiative, Unilever Brazil has recently bought certificates that cover 5,000 tonnes of sustainable soy oil, for use in dressings and margarine products, which will go some way to stimulate farmers to move their agricultural practices towards the (RTRS) criteria. Global production in soy oil is around 40 million tonnes and the company buys around 1%, we bet you didn’t know.

4,500 Rainbow Chicken workers at processing and farm plants in the Western Cape, North West, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape plants are out on strike, demanding better wages, reduced working hours and a backdated payment to April 2011, this final issue being the major sticking point, apparently.

As the interest rate migrates north in early spring, some of our retailers are shaking out the mothballs and preparing for a bleaker season of consumer spending. As it were. While the lilac-shirted credit retailers in the clothing sector generally benefit from an upswing in the rate, our manly cash boys do not, particularly those who cater for the hocked-to-the-gills upper-LSMs.