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THIS ISSUE: 20 November 2025

Black Friday, share sales, and the big W opens in SA

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This week’s Trade Tatler is so stuffed to the gills, bursting at the seams and filled to the brim with retailer news that we barely know where to start. So we’ll just begin at the beginning: Black Friday is most definitely a go in 2025, although the types of things South Africans will be buying are somewhat different to a few years back. Look out too for some big, big news from Pick n Pay regarding the Ackerman family letting go of a significant number of its shares. Shoprite is celebrating the first anniversary of its partnership with Discovery Vitality and the blue eagle known as Walmart has landed in SA. Enjoy the read.

See Trade Tatler archives

64m

Pick n Pay shares sold by the Ackerman family

60m

Vitality HealthyFoods added to Checkers’ baskets in 1 year

7km

target distance from home to work for new Shoprite hires

+10.4%

growth in full-year revenue at Astral Foods 

3.1%

retail trade sales growth in Sept 2025

YOUR NUMBERS THIS WEEK

RETAILERS AND WHOLESALERS

Black Friday

Ready, steady, shop!

Is it just us, or does it feel like last year’s silly season was just a couple of months back? Well, here it rolls around again, and what has certainly become an indelible part of this time of year is that day-come-month we call Black Friday. Opinions on whether it’s going to be a good or bad year vary, but the general consensus is that shoppers will no longer be on the hunt for big-ticket items like tech and durables. It’s the household essentials we’re all after. According to a Pick n Pay survey, 70% of its Smart Shoppers want discounts on groceries rather than luxury items, with shoppers planning to buy toiletries, fresh produce, clothing and shoes, and wine and liquor. At SPAR, most of its specials are focused on household staples like cake flour, maize meal, and rice, with some premium coffee and pool chlorine thrown into the mix, depending on the store’s target shopper.

So, for a slightly more analytical view and to get a feel of the feels among punters, Trade Intelligence asked South Africans aged 18+ for their thoughts on the event through a bespoke survey (using a convenience sample and online respondents only) conducted by our sister company Chirp, also part of the Smollan group. Let’s look at some of the numbers:

    • 61% of our respondents rated their anticipation and excitement of the event at the highest level, i.e. 5 out of 5 on our ‘Yipee!’ scale, while 80% were 4 or 5 out of 5 excited
    • Black Friday has officially morphed into Black November (64% have made an early purchase), and shoppers are preparing with intent: 61% have set money aside, 58% have made a shopping list, and 41% have checked normal prices to spot genuine deals
    • What’s on their radar? No surprises here… mostly groceries (50%), fashion (48%) and personal care (36%). And their mindset is clear and value-driven, looking for things they need (57%), upgrades (44%), household basics (42%), and whatever looks like a great bargain (41%)
    • When it comes to retailers, confidence is strongest in Takealot (63%), Makro (47%), Game (45%), Clicks (42%), Checkers (42%), Pick n Pay (41%), and Amazon (40%) to provide the best deals
    • BUT, shoppers aren’t blindly optimistic. While 73% believe Black Friday deals are worth waiting for, one-third think some discounts are misleading, and two-thirds say the idea of crowds stresses them out. Many also admit that comparing prices across retailers isn’t always easy
Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: One thing is certain: South Africans are excited, prepared and ready to make the most of Black Friday and Black November 2025.

Pick n Pay

Share and share alike

The big story coming out of Pick n Pay this week is that the Ackermen (and indeed women) have sold 64 million of their shares in Pick n Pay, effectively letting go of the family’s controlling stake in the business and dropping their voting interest from 49% to around 37%. That the Ackerman family is loosening its hold on the business is not news – they started the process shortly after the passing of Pick n Pay’s legendary founder and head of the family, Raymond Ackerman. But why are they selling such a big chunk of shares now? Basically, to pay off the loan that the family secured 16 months ago to support Pick n Pay’s rights offer, where they provided R1.1bn in equity for the company’s recapitalisation plan. Unsurprisingly, following Tuesday’s announcement of the share sale, Pick n Pay’s share price dropped by 7% – markets don’t particularly like sudden shake-ups, especially when it’s the founding family of a business that’s doing the shaking. But a longer-term view is that this is a necessary and positive step, marking the final phase of the company’s financial reset.

Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: For Pick n Pay, the sale brings in new investors, widening the shareholder base, and formalises the shift toward a new era of governance. The Ackerman family will remain the single largest anchor shareholder and is “fully committed” to the company, CEO Sean Summers and the leadership team.

Shoprite

Vital signs

Believe it or not, a year has gone by since Checkers partnered with Discovery Vitality on the HealthyFood benefit. How has that gone for them? In one word, fan-bloomin-tastically. Since September 2024, Checkers customers have added more than 60 million HealthyFood products into their baskets, earning Vitality members over 1.6 billion Discovery Miles (worth around R160m). The results of the partnership have shown up in the financials, too, with Checkers achieving +17.7% sales growth in fruit and vegetables this year. This has been boosted by the retailer’s “focus on health-conscious, as well as ethically and environmentally responsible, higher-income shoppers” and the continued expansion of its FreshX supermarkets – the fancy supers, in other words, with all the bells and whistles like sushi bars, artisan bakeries, wine cellars, and Kauai, Starbucks and Krispy Kreme counters. Checkers’ Simple Truth brand has also done well this year, increasing sales by +24.6% – we’re pretty sure its clever campaign with Jamie Oliver may have had something to do with that. 

In other news from the greater Group, Shoprite has launched a clever digital recruitment platform, designed to connect job-seekers with available Shoprite positions closest to their homes. On average, new hires now live just 7km from their workplace, which has significant benefits for job seekers in terms of commuting time and cost, while making it easier for store managers to find the right people for the job, faster. The in-house system is the result of a multi-year project brought to life by a local SMME, OTB Group (OTB), supported by Shoprite Next Capital, the Group’s enterprise and supplier development division.

source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: Everyone wins here – for the store, it will build closer links with its community. For employees, it will mean arriving on time and well-rested, while having saved significantly on commuter costs. And then hopefully those savings can be fed back into local economies.

In Brief

Banking on it

So Walmart’s first store in Clearwater Mall, Roodepoort, is opening today! We’ve sent one of our intrepid analysts to check things out and will report back on that next week. In the meantime, take a look at this video from the official opening. Next, here’s an interesting one from Pepkor, which we don’t usually cover due to its focus on clothing, GM and furniture. This story caught our attention, though, because the retail giant plans to open bank branches across the country, offering zero-fee services, potentially under the name ‘Pep Bank’. With 6,000 stores in its network, footprint would potentially be huge, even if only a fraction of those stores offer the banking services. Now, at Shoprite’s financial year-end results, Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said, and we quote, “You are going to see us enter the banking world. We already have a banking account, which we have not started marketing.” The retailer already offers the services at its Money Market counters… now it’s just a case of transferring those services onto an app, which we’re willing to bet our gogo’s prize-winning cabbage is already in the making. We’ll watch this space. And lastly, what’s going on at Circle K, you ask? After opening its first forecourt store three years ago in Pretoria, the US c-store giant now has five stores in Gauteng and will be opening two more in the Western Cape. Circle K currently has a partnership with Puma Energy, but word on the street is that Puma owner, Trafigura, is in talks with none other than Shell to acquire its downstream ops in SA. If that happens… well, we’ll let your imagination run with that thought.

Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25, Daily Investor 13/11/25

Ti Perspective: And this is why we love FMCG. Never a dull moment in our great industry.

MANUFACTURERS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS

Astral Foods

Reaching for the stars

Results time for Astral Foods, SA’s largest integrated poultry producer, and the numbers are not too shabby, hey Nandi. A weaker first half of the year was turned around successfully in H2, with full-year revenue growing +10.4% to R22.6bn. The poultry division contributed 82.5% of the total, with growth supported by increased slaughter volumes and higher selling prices in the second half following deflation in the first. The feeds division also grew volumes, both with external customers and to meet internal feed needs increasing revenue. Looking at operating profit, the business made R1.25 billion, up +42.8% from last year (when excluding a once-off insurance payout from 2024), thanks to sound cost management with help from higher production volumes, reducing production cost per unit. All this allowed Astral to finish the year off strong, with over R1bn in cash in its coffers.

Source: Daily Investor 17/11/25

Ti Perspective: The poultry business, eh… just two years ago, Astral was in deep crisis, juggling the effects of severe load shedding with the outbreak of bird flu that nearly brought the business to its knees. Two trips around the sun later, it’s a completely different ball game.

TRADE ENVIRONMENT

Retail Trade Sales

Sales pitch
By Ti Economist, Carey Leighton

StatsSA’s retail trade sales results for Sep 2025 are out, marking 19 consecutive months of positive real growth (i.e. adjusted to exclude inflation), at +3.1% year-on-year. 

This time around, growth came from all seven of the retailer types that Stats SA measures:

    • The biggest contribution to the total came from general dealers (predominantly selling food), at +1.9% year-on-year 
    • Retailers in textiles and clothing: +4.4% YoY,  marking 12 months of positive growth 
    • Retailers in household goods: +11.4%; retailers in hardware: +3.9% and ‘all other’ retailers (includes some ‘luxury’ specialist retailers): +3.7%, supported by the interest rate cuts
    • Retailers in pharma, cosmetics and toiletries: +4.0%, up against low growth in Sep 2024 (+0.6%)
    • Food specialists (e.g. bakeries, butcheries, fruit & veg that sell a specific type of food rather than a general assortment) reported low, but positive growth at +1.0%, after four months in the red. 
Source: Stats SA 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: As a consumer-driven economy, September’s real retail sales growth will support the Q3 GDP results (coming out early December). And Q4 is already full steam ahead with value promotions all over the FMCG landscape. The hope is that we will finish the year off strong.

See all

THE WEEKLY GURU

“If you have enthusiasm, you have a very dynamic, effective companion to travel with you on the road to Somewhere.”
Loretta Young

RETAILERS AND WHOLESALERS

Black Friday

Ready, steady, shop!

Is it just us, or does it feel like last year’s silly season was just a couple of months back? Well, here it rolls around again, and what has certainly become an indelible part of this time of year is that day-come-month we call Black Friday. Opinions on whether it’s going to be a good or bad year vary, but the general consensus is that shoppers will no longer be on the hunt for big-ticket items like tech and durables. It’s the household essentials we’re all after. According to a Pick n Pay survey, 70% of its Smart Shoppers want discounts on groceries rather than luxury items, with shoppers planning to buy toiletries, fresh produce, clothing and shoes, and wine and liquor. At SPAR, most of its specials are focused on household staples like cake flour, maize meal, and rice, with some premium coffee and pool chlorine thrown into the mix, depending on the store’s target shopper.

So, for a slightly more analytical view and to get a feel of the feels among punters, Trade Intelligence asked South Africans aged 18+ for their thoughts on the event through a bespoke survey (using a convenience sample and online respondents only) conducted by our sister company Chirp, also part of the Smollan group. Let’s look at some of the numbers:

    • 61% of our respondents rated their anticipation and excitement of the event at the highest level, i.e. 5 out of 5 on our ‘Yipee!’ scale, while 80% were 4 or 5 out of 5 excited
    • Black Friday has officially morphed into Black November (64% have made an early purchase), and shoppers are preparing with intent: 61% have set money aside, 58% have made a shopping list, and 41% have checked normal prices to spot genuine deals
    • What’s on their radar? No surprises here… mostly groceries (50%), fashion (48%) and personal care (36%). And their mindset is clear and value-driven, looking for things they need (57%), upgrades (44%), household basics (42%), and whatever looks like a great bargain (41%)
    • When it comes to retailers, confidence is strongest in Takealot (63%), Makro (47%), Game (45%), Clicks (42%), Checkers (42%), Pick n Pay (41%), and Amazon (40%) to provide the best deals
    • BUT, shoppers aren’t blindly optimistic. While 73% believe Black Friday deals are worth waiting for, one-third think some discounts are misleading, and two-thirds say the idea of crowds stresses them out. Many also admit that comparing prices across retailers isn’t always easy
Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: One thing is certain: South Africans are excited, prepared and ready to make the most of Black Friday and Black November 2025.

Pick n Pay

Share and share alike

The big story coming out of Pick n Pay this week is that the Ackermen (and indeed women) have sold 64 million of their shares in Pick n Pay, effectively letting go of the family’s controlling stake in the business and dropping their voting interest from 49% to around 37%. That the Ackerman family is loosening its hold on the business is not news – they started the process shortly after the passing of Pick n Pay’s legendary founder and head of the family, Raymond Ackerman. But why are they selling such a big chunk of shares now? Basically, to pay off the loan that the family secured 16 months ago to support Pick n Pay’s rights offer, where they provided R1.1bn in equity for the company’s recapitalisation plan. Unsurprisingly, following Tuesday’s announcement of the share sale, Pick n Pay’s share price dropped by 7% – markets don’t particularly like sudden shake-ups, especially when it’s the founding family of a business that’s doing the shaking. But a longer-term view is that this is a necessary and positive step, marking the final phase of the company’s financial reset.

Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: For Pick n Pay, the sale brings in new investors, widening the shareholder base, and formalises the shift toward a new era of governance. The Ackerman family will remain the single largest anchor shareholder and is “fully committed” to the company, CEO Sean Summers and the leadership team.

Shoprite

Vital signs

Believe it or not, a year has gone by since Checkers partnered with Discovery Vitality on the HealthyFood benefit. How has that gone for them? In one word, fan-bloomin-tastically. Since September 2024, Checkers customers have added more than 60 million HealthyFood products into their baskets, earning Vitality members over 1.6 billion Discovery Miles (worth around R160m). The results of the partnership have shown up in the financials, too, with Checkers achieving +17.7% sales growth in fruit and vegetables this year. This has been boosted by the retailer’s “focus on health-conscious, as well as ethically and environmentally responsible, higher-income shoppers” and the continued expansion of its FreshX supermarkets – the fancy supers, in other words, with all the bells and whistles like sushi bars, artisan bakeries, wine cellars, and Kauai, Starbucks and Krispy Kreme counters. Checkers’ Simple Truth brand has also done well this year, increasing sales by +24.6% – we’re pretty sure its clever campaign with Jamie Oliver may have had something to do with that. 

In other news from the greater Group, Shoprite has launched a clever digital recruitment platform, designed to connect job-seekers with available Shoprite positions closest to their homes. On average, new hires now live just 7km from their workplace, which has significant benefits for job seekers in terms of commuting time and cost, while making it easier for store managers to find the right people for the job, faster. The in-house system is the result of a multi-year project brought to life by a local SMME, OTB Group (OTB), supported by Shoprite Next Capital, the Group’s enterprise and supplier development division.

source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: Everyone wins here – for the store, it will build closer links with its community. For employees, it will mean arriving on time and well-rested, while having saved significantly on commuter costs. And then hopefully those savings can be fed back into local economies.

In Brief

Banking on it

So Walmart’s first store in Clearwater Mall, Roodepoort, is opening today! We’ve sent one of our intrepid analysts to check things out and will report back on that next week. In the meantime, take a look at this video from the official opening. Next, here’s an interesting one from Pepkor, which we don’t usually cover due to its focus on clothing, GM and furniture. This story caught our attention, though, because the retail giant plans to open bank branches across the country, offering zero-fee services, potentially under the name ‘Pep Bank’. With 6,000 stores in its network, footprint would potentially be huge, even if only a fraction of those stores offer the banking services. Now, at Shoprite’s financial year-end results, Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said, and we quote, “You are going to see us enter the banking world. We already have a banking account, which we have not started marketing.” The retailer already offers the services at its Money Market counters… now it’s just a case of transferring those services onto an app, which we’re willing to bet our gogo’s prize-winning cabbage is already in the making. We’ll watch this space. And lastly, what’s going on at Circle K, you ask? After opening its first forecourt store three years ago in Pretoria, the US c-store giant now has five stores in Gauteng and will be opening two more in the Western Cape. Circle K currently has a partnership with Puma Energy, but word on the street is that Puma owner, Trafigura, is in talks with none other than Shell to acquire its downstream ops in SA. If that happens… well, we’ll let your imagination run with that thought.

Source: Tatler Reporter 19/11/25, Daily Investor 13/11/25

Ti Perspective: And this is why we love FMCG. Never a dull moment in our great industry.

MANUFACTURERS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS

Astral Foods

Reaching for the stars

Results time for Astral Foods, SA’s largest integrated poultry producer, and the numbers are not too shabby, hey Nandi. A weaker first half of the year was turned around successfully in H2, with full-year revenue growing +10.4% to R22.6bn. The poultry division contributed 82.5% of the total, with growth supported by increased slaughter volumes and higher selling prices in the second half following deflation in the first. The feeds division also grew volumes, both with external customers and to meet internal feed needs increasing revenue. Looking at operating profit, the business made R1.25 billion, up +42.8% from last year (when excluding a once-off insurance payout from 2024), thanks to sound cost management with help from higher production volumes, reducing production cost per unit. All this allowed Astral to finish the year off strong, with over R1bn in cash in its coffers.

Source: Daily Investor 17/11/25

Ti Perspective: The poultry business, eh… just two years ago, Astral was in deep crisis, juggling the effects of severe load shedding with the outbreak of bird flu that nearly brought the business to its knees. Two trips around the sun later, it’s a completely different ball game.

TRADE ENVIRONMENT

Retail Trade Sales

Sales pitch
By Ti Economist, Carey Leighton

StatsSA’s retail trade sales results for Sep 2025 are out, marking 19 consecutive months of positive real growth (i.e. adjusted to exclude inflation), at +3.1% year-on-year. 

This time around, growth came from all seven of the retailer types that Stats SA measures:

    • The biggest contribution to the total came from general dealers (predominantly selling food), at +1.9% year-on-year 
    • Retailers in textiles and clothing: +4.4% YoY,  marking 12 months of positive growth 
    • Retailers in household goods: +11.4%; retailers in hardware: +3.9% and ‘all other’ retailers (includes some ‘luxury’ specialist retailers): +3.7%, supported by the interest rate cuts
    • Retailers in pharma, cosmetics and toiletries: +4.0%, up against low growth in Sep 2024 (+0.6%)
    • Food specialists (e.g. bakeries, butcheries, fruit & veg that sell a specific type of food rather than a general assortment) reported low, but positive growth at +1.0%, after four months in the red. 
Source: Stats SA 19/11/25

Ti Perspective: As a consumer-driven economy, September’s real retail sales growth will support the Q3 GDP results (coming out early December). And Q4 is already full steam ahead with value promotions all over the FMCG landscape. The hope is that we will finish the year off strong.

See all

THE WEEKLY GURU

“If you have enthusiasm, you have a very dynamic, effective companion to travel with you on the road to Somewhere.”
Loretta Young

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