The cannier among those gimlet-eyed men (and of course women) who are called to the hard, lonely road of analysm have long been of the view that Shoprite’s interest – and indeed revenue – in Africa is as much about retail property as it is about retail. So it would not have surprised them, at least, to hear that The Big Red One is about to drop $205million on retail infrastructure in Nigeria, where the bucks and the punters are to be found in abundance, but the malls are not. They’re planning to add another nine stores to their existing four by mid next year, and are going even greater guns in Angola, with no fewer than 21 planned. To serve all of these, new DCs are planned for Luanda and Lobito in Angola, which has the highest per capita income in Africa right now, and one in Nigeria. Back on the home front, meanwhile, the surprising news is that Checkers will be running a direct-to-caterers business out of their DCs, called Checkers Food Services, in response to demand. And even more surprising is the fact that Shoprite is opening an office in India, with a view to kick-starting its stalled operations on that vast and mysterious land mass.

Comment: Shoprite: Leviathan or behemoth? It’s too close to call right now.

“How’re Pick n Pay doing up north?” you ask. And we’ll tell you. If you’re Meikles, who own a 51% stake in TM Supermarkets, with our very own Big Blue pocketing the rest, very nicely. Quarterly turnover for the group at the end of June was up 15% to US$89million, with growth reported in retail and in their Tanganda beverages division. One TM store has been converted to a full-blooded Pick n Pay, with three more to follow by the end of the year. A recovery in sentiment is underway among Zimbabwean consumers, who seem to be responding positively to the growing options available to them. In other Pick n Pay news, they’ve gone and listed a new financial instrument on the JSE in the form of a cool R2billion’s worth of something called Senior Unsecured Fixed Rate Notes, as far as we can gather. Whether this means they’re borrowing that in cold hard readies from willing punters for a fixed rate of interest, is anybody’s guess.

Comment: Anybody?

“Whither Massmart?” you muse idly, and again you have uncannily come to the right place. Having delivered a very tidy set of results indeed, transaction costs notwithstanding, they are poised for more bejizzlement and what have you in the current F to the Y. Just for eg., they are planning to spend R2.6bn in the next 16 months, mainly on the opening of 40 new stores, 35 of which will be within the borders. The Men in Black are champing at the bit to make like Whitey in Africa, but property rights remain an issue. All of this on top of the record R1.7bn they invested in stores and infrastructure last year, which has put the squeeze on margins somewhat. These will grow, they say, after 2014, once the investment in DCs and IT start to really bear fruit. “We’re in a heavy investment cycle,” says Mr Pattison, who is probably, no, definitely, the coolest retail CEO in SA. Until Pick n Pay hires Tom Petty or someone like that.

Comment: And if it’s retail property they’re after, they should have a word with Whitey himself…

Nice one, that energetic logistics group. Imperial grew revenue 19.4% to R27,7 billion for the FY ending 30 June, with operating profit up 15.8% to R1,5biljoens. This as Imperial Holdings posted revenue of R81billion. How’d they do that? “An extensive resource base of transportation, warehousing and distribution operations and best-of-breed integrative process and technology solutions,” according to Chief Integration Officer Cobus Rossouw, one of the leading thinkers in an increasingly thoughtful sector. Logistics, far from being one of the things that you have to have, like lightbulbs and Excel, is fast becoming a competitive differentiator, and Imperial is tapping into that.

Comment: We of the Tatler have long argued. What? Oh, and also long argued that logistics is the one area where South Africa should differentiate itself if its ascendance in an awakening Africa is to be maintained.

We have been hearing about the impact of input costs and cheap imports on the chicken supply chain for how long now, and now they have come home to roost at Astral Foods, where 150 staff have had to be retrenched due to cutbacks in production. Further retrenchments may follow. Grain prices can contribute as much as 75% to the cost of the Sunday roast, and these were up to record highs last month as drought swept the grain producing wastelands of the American Midwest. Cuts across the industry could total 3,000 jobs in the next few months as more producers feel the squeeze. All of this at a time when cheap chicken is being dumped uncontrolled on our shores by Brazil, Argentina and the EU.

Comment: We like an untrammelled marketplace as much as the next globetrotting one percenter. But not when South African jobs are destroyed.

“The winds of August have howled over the bone-dry Highveld, giving South Africa’s interior a typically murky, sickly-yellow sky full of dust,” begins the latest, ominous dispatch from Cees Bruggemans, our favourite economist, two words you generally don’t find together in these pages. He goes on, eventually, to obliquely discuss the new GDP growth figures, which at 3.2% in the second quarter are up from 2.7% in the first, but if you listen to the good Dr are no cause for celebration. Not only are we affected by the headwinds of an ailing global economy, he argues, but we are hoist with our own petard holding production back as the heightened uncertainty imposes caution on business expansion, and the state, bedevilled by a lack of capacity, is unable to lead us out of the morass. Contributing to growth, to return to more cheerful ground, were mining and quarrying (by 1.5 percentage points), finance, real estate and business services (0.5 percentage points), the wholesale, retail and motor trade; catering and accommodation industry (0.4 percentage points), government services (0.3 percentage points) and transport, storage and the communication industry (0.2 percentage points).

Comment: Another 4%, and we’ll start picking up jobs…

According to some pony-suited advertising guy, bans on liquor advertising will send this already dangerous industry underground, engaging in stealth marketing through social media, where they are likely to encounter such underground characters as P Diddy, who tweets incessantly about how righteous Ciroc vodka is.

Massmart has just unleashed its first Walmart private label product onto the market, in the form of Great Value alkaline batteries which at 35% less than locally produced batteries will in all likelihood put it amongst the competition. The Great Value brand carries lines in frozen foods, baked goods, soups and juices, and its arrival, says analysts, could spark the price war we’ve all been holding our breath for.

Pick n Pay and Shoprite are apparently under investigation by the National Consumer Commission (NCC) whose agents found expired products on the shelves at one store belonging to each. The National Consumer Commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, is reputedly shocked (coughgrandstandingcough) and is not ruling out the possibility of a class action, although whether she has the power to rule one in is moot.