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A solid set of interims from SPAR, as promised last week, with Group turnover up +5.2% to R67.6bn, wholesale turnover up +7.6% to R44.6bn, and Group operating profit increasing +7.1% to R1.8bn. Wholesale sales in the core grocery Southern African business were up +4.6%, driven by increased marketing initiatives in store, and unrestricted liquor trading, which drove increased footfall to SPAR stores, despite the continued closure of 13 SPAR-format stores and nine Tops at SPAR stores still closed after last July’s social unrest. Sales in Ireland and southwest England grew +8.3% in euro terms (+2.9% in rands), and the newer Polish outfit grew +6.5% in local currency terms (-0.7% in rands). In Switzerland, they declined both in local currency and rands, as punters abandoned local retailers post-lockdown in favour of larger stores. In other SPAR news, the online shopping platform, Spar2U, will launch at many of its stores in the coming months. “There is great enthusiasm from our independent retailers to implement SPAR’s new online shopping platform, Spar2U,” says the Verdant One.

Comment: Solid stuff from a business that was particularly impacted by both the lockdowns and the unrest. In case you missed it last week, ready our neat summary here.

“What’s up with retail property in these post-COVID days?” you ask, even though COVID is still with us, albeit in currently less deadly variants. Let’s ask specialised retail property fund Vukile, shall we, who have a significant portfolio of malls both in Spain and here in the Beloved Country, where they are about to acquire another two, in undisclosed locations. “We operate in the sweet spot in the SA market, with significant exposure to brilliantly performing township and rural shopping centres, where trading densities are up 10.2% and 6.9%, and footfalls are up 106% and 104%, respectively,” says CEO Laurence Rapp, getting right into it. Vukile has R33bn in assets under management, 46% of it in South Africa, where vacancies are at 2.6%, and 54% in Spain, with vacancies of 1.6%. Vukile is a big believer in sustainable malls and has just signed off on its first green loan with Nedbank, to fund 19 solar energy projects and energy-efficiency initiatives in South Africa, with the intention of upping its sustainable energy consumption by at least 50% over the next three years.

Comment: Reports of the demise of bricks and mortar (and photovoltaic panel) retail turn out to have been much exaggerated.

To the green and rolling canelands of KwaZulu-Natal, where Checkers has just planted its third smaller format Checkers Foods store, and its first for the province. The smaller-format stores offer an expanded fresh food offering with solution-based convenience ranges curated to meet specific customer needs, including lunch, braai, dinner or emergency purchases, and are squarely aimed at the market share of Woolies. Sticking with the Shoprite Group: with much data, comes much hacking, and The Big Red One has just reported that it is aware of a suspected data compromise affecting customers who engaged in money transfers to and within eSwatini and within Namibia and Zambia. It has taken the necessary steps. Finally, Clicks’ legal ‘how’s your father’ with the Independent Community Pharmacy Association (ICPA) is scheduled for the Constitutional Court in September. UCPA wants nothing less than the closure of all 650 Clicks pharmacies, on the grounds that the business should not be selling pharmaceuticals from a business owned by the Clicks Group – Unicorn Pharmaceuticals.

Comment: One to watch, with major implications for the very notion of a vertically integrated supply chain.

In the UK, punters are facing the prospect of empty shelves come the end of June if a massive railworkers’ strike goes ahead as planned, despite the promise by authorities to prioritise freight in the eventuality that it does. Also in the UK, the Centre for Retail Research has established that 650,000 jobs have been lost in the UK’s retail sector over the past five years, and 72,500 stores have closed. The rising tide that has lifted the fortunes of online retail seems to have left some people and businesses behind. Next, to China, where Walmart is looking to a strategy revamp to improve its fortunes: the lumbering giant has struggled to keep up with its nimbler Chinese competitors, which are known for their wider range of local products and (more recently) for their faster home deliveries. CEO Doug McMillon has identified China’s recent bout of COVID restrictions as “our biggest international pressure point.” Back in the US, in the meantime, Walmart is extending its drone delivery service to areas covering as many as 4 million households, in states scattered across that vast and troubled country.

Comment: Being so globally extended, Walmart serves as a bellwether for the trends both positive and negative which impact our industry.

As anyone who’s attempted to grow potatoes knows (full disclosure: we have), they’re a demanding crop. Plump, tasty and delicious the first year; the next year – nada. With this in mind, oven chips giant McCain Foods has broken ground on its second Farms of the Future regenerative farming project globally, right here in the Beloved Country, where an average of around 2.6 million tonnes of potatoes are harvested annually, 19% of which become slap chips or crisps for the local market. The farm, near Lichtenburg in North West, will cover 465 hectares of irrigation and 90 hectares of dryland on which McCain will grow 125 hectares of potatoes every year. It will focus on enhancing productivity, while prioritising soil health, water efficiency, the reduction of agro-chemical impacts and the introduction and preservation of biodiversity. McCain has made a global commitment to implement regenerative agricultural practices across 100% of its potato acreage by 2030.

Comment: Exciting times – for food production, and for South Africa, where food security is an issue of increasing concern.

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) Namibia announced last week that it will be launching its new locally produced juice brand, Cappy Delight, a 10% fruit juice with a variety of flavours, including guava, mango and tropical. Moving on, PepsiCo aims to draw 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, and to this end has installed solar panels at 10 of its facilities across South Africa. The latest, at the PepsiCo Park distribution centre, including panels and a battery system, has been described as “one of SA’s largest microgrids”. The business is currently achieving annual savings of over R3m this way. Finally, big up to Royco, whose new TV campaign cleverly celebrates the value of switching off devices and sitting down to eat dinner together as a family, if family is your choice of lifestyle.

Comment: Switching off and taking time to contemplate the next mouthful is indeed a valuable practice.

It’s a cruel cliché, often repeated, that the young people of our country are our greatest resource. Yet 66.5% of youth are unemployed, receiving few of the 370,000 new jobs created during in the last quarter. It’s true that the government has established a number of agencies and embarked on a variety of initiatives to prioritise youth employment – the revitalised National Youth Service (NYS), the National Pathway Management Network and Presidential Youth Employment Services (YES), and the National Youth Development Agency. SA Youth, launched on Youth Day last year, is a network established across eight government departments to help young people find pathways into the economy. “What these programmes show is that public employment can achieve multiple objectives at once. These include addressing unemployment, building skills and experience, providing public goods and services, and, perhaps most important of all, contributing to a massive national effort to improve the state of our country,” says our President.

Comment: Time, now, to turn acronyms into jobs, a task that cannot be left solely to government.

It was great to see you all at last week’s ‘Rising Prices’ webinar (yes, you too sneaky whiteboard guy) where our panel of experts illuminated us on just how we got into the situation we’re in and gave us some food for thought on where we’re headed. Many numbers were bandied about during the session, but here are just two that stopped us dead in our tracks: it currently costs R400-R500 more than last year to fill up our cars, and over R3,000 more to fill a truck with diesel. Let. That. Sink. In. So what now? Is it time to tuck into those food stores we buried underground in the event of a zombie apocalypse? Well, perhaps not yet but you can watch the recording of the session here or read our article here to decide for yourself.

Comment: A special word of thanks to Carey Leighton, Roelien Havenga and Daniel Silke who graced us with their expert presence on the day, and of course to all those who attended. We hope it sparked some healthy debate in your businesses on just how to navigate these turbid waters.