The 2026 Trade Intelligence (Ti) Retail Conference, held in partnership with Nedbank, brought together leaders from across South Africa’s FMCG retail ecosystem to examine the forces shaping the market and the opportunities emerging within it.
Against a backdrop of constrained consumer spending and moderating growth, the day’s conversations moved from the macroeconomic outlook and shifting FMCG growth opportunities to AI, B2B (business-to-business), retail media, convenience and the evolving informal route to market.
While each session tackled a different part of the retail landscape, several common threads emerged: growth is becoming more fragmented, traditional channel boundaries are blurring, customer expectations continue to evolve, and data and technology are creating new possibilities. At the same time, speakers repeatedly returned to the importance of strong retail fundamentals, customer understanding and effective execution.
Here are the key takeaways from each session, in the order they unfolded on the day.
Welcome and Introduction
Janene Laas (Trade Intelligence), Prithivan Pillay (Nedbank)
Ti opened the fourth annual Retail Conference around the challenge of navigating an increasingly complex FMCG retail environment and translating insight into practical action.
The 2026 conference was held in partnership with Nedbank, with both organisations emphasising the value of bringing stakeholders together to share perspectives, collaborate and identify new opportunities.
Nedbank highlighted retail’s importance to the South African economy and the sector’s continued evolution in response to changing customer expectations, innovation and market challenges.
“Our purpose is to help the FMCG retail ecosystem make sense of this complexity and to connect the dots and turn insights into action.”
– Janene Laas
The Macro Perspective: Retail Trading Context
Nicky Weimar (Nedbank)
Consumer spending and retail sales remain in positive territory, but momentum softened during the first half of 2026, with real retail sales growing just +0.4% in Q2. The consumer picture remains uneven. Lower interest rates have provided some relief, but household affordability remains exposed to inflation, fuel costs, debt and stagnant employment growth.
Nedbank expects positive real income growth of +1.4% in 2026, while real retail sales and consumer spending growth are expected to soften to +1.9% and +1.8% over the next two years. The outlook remains highly dependent on external factors, particularly fuel prices and inflation, but the base case is for softer growth rather than a dramatic downturn.
“Softer over the next two years as a result of this shock, but not falling apart, not shrinking into an outright dramatic slowdown or a recession.”
– Nicky Weimar
FMCG Retail Outlook: Channel Blurring Creating Pockets of Growth
Carey Leighton (Trade Intelligence), Andrea Slabber (Trade Intelligence), Nicola Allen (Trade Intelligence)
Ti estimates that the FMCG market grew +6.2% in 2025 against food inflation of +4.2%, pointing to underlying growth closer to +2%. Growth is also not occurring uniformly across sectors, increasing the need to identify more specific pockets of opportunity.
Corporate retailers are increasingly looking beyond traditional grocery for growth. Across the six major corporate retail groups, the store footprint has expanded by around 4,000 stores over the past decade to more than 11,000, including expansion into categories such as health and beauty, clothing and pets.
Channel and category boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred: health and beauty products are moving into convenience, out-of-home and other retail environments; QSR brands are entering at-home FMCG occasions; and supermarkets are expanding into ready-to-eat and food services.
These adjacencies create opportunities, but also new competitive threats. Growth opportunities need to be tested against whether shoppers want, need and can afford the proposition, supported by close observation of what is happening in trade.
“While you’re spotting growth somewhere, you’re actually biting into someone else’s growth and someone is probably looking at your space to grab a bit of yours.”
– Nicola Allen
AI in Retail: Unlocking Value at Scale
Claire Cobbledick (Accenture Song), Rudi Nienaber (Smollan), Jean Ochse (Massmart)
Businesses should start with the commercial problem they are trying to solve, rather than with AI itself. Strong, usable data foundations are essential before AI can create value at scale. This means businesses do not need the most complex AI solution for every problem; the focus should remain on the value generated relative to the cost and complexity of implementation.
Retailers are already seeing opportunities for AI in areas such as demand planning, supply-chain optimisation and shop-floor execution, where technology can help employees identify patterns and act on them more effectively.
AI should also support both employee and customer experience. Giving store teams better access to stock, replenishment and out-of-stock information is one practical example of where AI can create immediate value.
“Don’t start with an AI strategy, start with your business strategy.”
– Rudi Nienaber
B2B: Opportunities in FMCG
Mark Cotton (Shoprite Group), Ahmed Seedat (Unilever Food Solutions)
B2B (business-to-business) cannot simply replicate a B2C (business-to-consumer) model. Its customer ecosystem is more complex, and the consequences of poor fulfilment are higher when customers depend on stock to run their own businesses.
Trust, reliability and personalisation are therefore central, and B2B businesses need to accommodate how different customers want to interact – from telesales and email to mobile and online – rather than forcing everyone onto one channel.
Trading rhythms are also different: promotional, stock and supply planning often needs to happen well ahead of the final consumer occasion and account for regional and customer-specific requirements.
Innovation should make business customers’ lives easier, but only after the fundamentals – product information, pricing, payment and on-time, in-full delivery – are working consistently.
“If you don’t deliver the fundamentals, you’re not in the game.”
– Mark Cotton
The Store is Media
Michael Smollan (Smollan)
The modern consumer journey is fragmented across physical and digital touchpoints, requiring brands to think about sales and marketing as one connected ecosystem rather than separate functions. Mental availability – being easy to think of and choose – only creates value when matched by physical availability and the ability for the shopper to actually buy the product.
Fragmented teams, budgets, agencies and datasets make this difficult. Sales, shopper, media, activation and in-store data need to work together to identify which commercial levers to pull.
Strong demand without strong physical availability can benefit competitors instead; demand creation and conversion therefore need to be planned together.
“Getting chosen and getting bought are one job, not two departments.”
– Michael Smollan
Loyalty, Retail Media and Digital Innovation in Retail
Dylan Piatti (Advantage Africa), Vincent Viviers (Pick n Pay), Adrian Naidoo (Boxer)
Loyalty data gives retailers a powerful first-party view of customer behaviour across stores, apps, websites and other digital channels, creating new opportunities for targeting and measurement.
Retail media needs clearer, more transparent and increasingly standardised measurement so that brands can compare investment across retailers and understand the commercial return.
Retailers should be brought into integrated brand planning alongside trade marketing, brand teams and agencies because they hold valuable information on what shoppers buy, when they buy and where competitors are gaining or losing ground.
Pricing, media and the in-store experience should ultimately work together against a defined customer and commercial objective rather than operating as isolated activities.
“The pricing drives an outcome. The media drives an outcome. The in-store experience drives an outcome. All of them together will help you win with your customer, and you can’t separate them.”
– Adrian Naidoo
The Future of Convenience
Pride Mnene Hlungwani (bp), Domnick Sipho Nkhatu (bp), Waldo Spies (FreshStop), Gary Kyriacou (The Pantry)
Convenience is evolving beyond servicing the vehicle or providing a quick transaction. Food, hospitality, service and broader customer missions are becoming increasingly important in giving shoppers a reason to visit forecourts.
One size does not fit all. Site demographics, shopper missions, time of day and local behaviour should inform range, store layout and promotions rather than applying the same proposition across every location.
On-demand expectations are redefining convenience. Forecourt retailers are competing not only with other forecourts, but with any business able to fulfil a customer need quickly and easily.
Value needs to be considered in context: FreshStop emphasised targeted promotions and meal deals for price-sensitive shoppers, while The Pantry placed greater emphasis on experience and rewards. Across the different models, understanding the specific customer remains key.
“The future is now. The Uber customer has arrived. Believe you me, they don’t want it tomorrow. They want it now and on time.”
– Domnick Sipho Nkhatu
Midi-Wholesalers: Enablers or Disruptors?
Tshego Modise (Trade Intelligence), Richard Mamokeane (Yebo Market), Nobuhle Dube (Nondumiso Tuck)
Midi-wholesalers have become an increasingly important part of the informal FMCG route to market, competing through agility, bulk buying, speed, proximity and hyper-local distribution. Their proximity to traders gives them insight into local store formats, product demand, pricing and purchasing rhythms, while businesses such as Yebo Market are creating greater visibility for manufacturers into this fragmented ecosystem.
Relationships and local presence are important capabilities. Locally based brand builders can build trust with traders, while midi-wholesalers help reduce the time and transport costs involved in sourcing stock. Last-mile delivery, trade disruption and counterfeit products remain significant challenges.
Nobuhle Dube’s experience illustrated the role of community relationships in informal retail growth: her business expanded in response to local demand, creates local employment and uses trusted customer relationships – including extending credit to longstanding pensioner customers – to build loyalty.
“Midi wholesalers have become an increasingly important part of the FMCG route to market. The way that they are winning in this game is through agility, bulk buying, speed and hyper-local distribution.”
– Tshego Modise
The Big Picture
Across a diverse programme, one message remained consistent: there are opportunities for growth in South African FMCG retail, but finding and capturing them increasingly requires greater precision.
Growth is emerging across new formats, channels, customer missions and routes to market, often beyond the boundaries businesses have traditionally used to define their markets. But those same shifts are bringing new competitors into the picture.
The day also reinforced the importance of connected market, channel and shopper understanding. As growth becomes more fragmented, businesses need to know not only what is changing, but where those shifts are happening, what is driving them and what they mean commercially. Data and technology can add visibility and speed, but they are most valuable when interpreted in context and applied to a clear business question.
At the same time, the fundamentals remain critical. Availability, service, relevance, affordability, relationships and reliable execution all play a role in converting opportunity into sustainable growth.
Perhaps the most practical takeaway from the day was also one of the simplest: stay close to the shopper and close to the trade. As the retail landscape continues to evolve, staying close to shifts in shopper behaviour, channel dynamics and the trade will be essential to identifying where the next opportunities lie.
