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In news that might well rattle the competition, Pick n Pay has announced the launch of PnP Groceries on the Mr D Platform. Mr D, as you know, is owned by Takealot, South Africa’s largest online retailer, and we’re surprised the Competition Commission hasn’t weighed in at this point. The service is being piloted in Cape Town and Joburg and will expand to 300 stores nationwide by December. It will allow punters to earn both Smart Shopper rewards and eBucks. “This new dedicated grocery shopping experience with Pick n Pay through the Mr D app allows customers to shop over 10,000 food and grocery products – at the same price as in-store – for delivery in an hour. It really ups the convenience factor for customers,” says Alexander Wörz, Mr D CEO, who we have it on good authority is known by staff as Mr W.

Comment: A competitive boost for Pick n Pay in the online grocery game, and a Hail Mary pass for Takealot as they nervously eye the arrival of Amazon in full force on these shores.

In its inevitable drive to become a power utility in addition to all the other things it does, Shoprite has installed the equivalent of 20 soccer fields of solar at 62 sites around the Beloved Country. In the last year alone, it has increased its installed capacity of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems by +82% to 26,606 kWp – enough to power 3,700 households for a year. Not that this is what that power will be doing; rather, it will be used to keep the lights on in stores and DCs and take a little pressure off our tottering national grid. The Big Red One has also installed LED lighting at all sites, and now has a fleet of 1,041 solar-powered trailers on the road. Semi-unrelated, they will also be adding another 200,000m2 of distribution capacity over the next three years – much of which will presumably be covered in solar panels.

Comment: A grim necessity in our megawatt-starved economy, but also a burgeoning opportunity, in which Shoprite is, characteristically, leading the charge.

Last year, Massmart let it be known that it would be looking for a buyer for its underperforming stores in East and West Africa – Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania in the former, Nigeria and Ghana in the latter. Sadly, that endeavour has not yielded a suitor, and the stores will now have to be closed. In happier news from the Men in Black, they have teamed up with local fintech Retail Capital to offer working capital to the SME customers – mainly independent retailers – of its Jumbo Cash & Carry stores. So credit, basically, to the tune of up to R5m, accessible within 24 hours. Qualifying SME customers are also able to access Massmart’s pre-funded Mastercard, which gives them a 1% rebate on in-store purchases. Moving on, Woolies has become SA’s first retailer to go 100% single-use plastics free on its shopping bags across its 400 foodmarkets. The Dapper One has taken over 120 million of the diaphanous devils out of circulation. Unrelated, it’s expanding its delivery services to 100 more stores, and bringing the Woolies Dash service and its mobile app into one ecosystem. Finally, SPARis getting behind Cancervive this Breast Cancer Awareness month by introducing pink labels and caps on its 500ml bottles of still water in October and donating a part of the proceeds to the NGO, which targets poor and rural communities with awareness campaigns.

Comment: Some excellent initiatives all round.

Something of a shakeup is underway among the grocery retailers in Europe, on the news that Italian supermarket chain Esselunga has joined the Swiss purchasing alliance Epic Partners, shortly after French cooperative Système U had said they too were taking the plunge. Epic Partners, to throw another country into the mix, was founded by the German Edeka chain, and includes Picnic (Netherlands), Migros (Switzerland), Biedronka (Poland), Jerónimo Martins (Portugal), ICA (Sweden) and Magnit (Russia), and gives their members significant purchasing power across a regionalised supply chain. It also offers them some protection against the multinational competition: all of them are nationally significant outfits that do not trade across borders. Over in the US, German discounter Aldi is growing rapidly as economic conditions tighten, adding more than one million new households to their shopper base in the year through September, with foot traffic up +10.5% across most of its 2,200 stores.

Comment: Fascinating news out of Europe, though not with much relevance to our own fanatically competitive retail universe.

Ingredient supplier Kerry, the self-described world’s leading taste and nutrition company, popped up in these pages a couple weeks back for its work in the development of some devilishly clever gum or emulsion or other. This week, it’s back with the launch of the Food Waste Estimator, a tool for raising awareness of food loss and waste. The online gizmo allows consumers and manufacturers to quantify and understand the financial and environmental impact of reducing food waste either in the food chain or in the home, with tips for reducing waste provided by Too Good to Go, the world’s largest food saving app. Through its portfolio of preservation technologies – spanning reduction of food waste through fermentation, vinegar-based ingredients, plant extracts and enzymes, alongside conventional organic acid-based preservatives like propionates and acetates – Kerry itself extends the shelf-life of over 34.5 billion loaves of bread and 43.5 billion servings of meat every year.

Comment: Again from Kerry, a fascinating peep under the bonnet of this great industry we call home. And a reminder that we have a single planet at our disposal and all need to use its resources more sparingly.

First up, a threatened strike by Transnet workers during South Africa’s peak berry export season of October and November could threaten 30,000 jobs in the sector and put a big dent in the berry industry’s export revenue of R3bn. Last year, the industry exported more than 15,000 tons of fruit, primarily to the EU and the United Kingdom, a small archipelago off the EU’s west coast. Our friends at Joekels are launching two new variants of Tetley’s Iced Tea that are fortified with added vitamins – B5 in the case of the new Tetley+Mango flavoured green tea, and C in the instance of the Tetley+Peach & Orange flavoured green tea. And in fortification of a different sort, Distell’s new Amarula African Gin uses marula fruits, juniper, orange blossom and Ghanaian grains of paradise to give it its trademark botanical flavour.

Comment: Truly we live in a time of wonders. And threatening industrial action.

Let’s check the vitals of the dear old SA Economy, shall we? For starters, real GDP is likely to come through 1.9% higher YoY, although it was down -0.7% for the second quarter. The CPI for August was up +7.6%, with food inflation running at a brutal 11.3%. The cost of a litre of petrol was a rand and some change down from September to October, providing some relief for embattled punters, but then diesel climbed by 10c. The trade balance for the month of August was R7bn to the good, and unemployment was officially 44.1% for quarter two, slightly down from the first quarter, which is cold comfort to the ranks of the unemployed. Retail trade sales (at current prices) were +8.6% up YoY, but off an extremely low base as laid down by the hardships of 2021 and impacted by the inflation of 2022. Speaking of which, said inflation has prompted the stern-jawed luminaries of the Reserve Bank to up the prime lending rate by 75 basis points to 9.75%.

Comment: A tolerably grim picture. These numbers were gathered by the research mavens of Trade Intelligence, who provide perhaps the most comprehensive macroeconomic snapshot we’ve seen.