Impact, innovation and responsible retail: Read the Shoprite Group’s 2022 Integrated and Sustainability Reports

We are proud to share the 2022 Shoprite Holdings Integrated Report and Sustainability Report. From employee training and small supplier development, to donating millions in surplus food and goods and reducing our carbon emission intensity – our purpose is to uplift lives every day. In the past financial year: the Group invested R600 million in

The Coca-Cola Company in South Africa continues to Offer Consumers Choice

With seven low calorie/low kilojoule carbonated cold drinks in its stable, The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), continues to offer consumers choice despite recent changes to its product portfolio. Two years ago, TCCC announced that it would retire select products in various markets around the world as part of a global portfolio refresh. According to Silke Bucker,

The one-day Black Friday sale is back at Game

After two consecutive years of month-long Black November deals, due to the Covid pandemic, Game is returning to its one-day Black Friday sale and bringing back midnight openings in 2022, as consumer shopping habits continue to return to normal after Covid-19. The retailer will open most of their 108 stores across the country from 00:00

The effects of ”lights off” for the retail industry

As we flip flop between candles powering up and diesel drumming to a now common beat – with the longest run of loadshedding in South Africa recently under our belts – the massive impact this has had on business has been nothing less than debilitating leaving our economy in a precarious position. With loadshedding recently

Peach Payments Partners With Stitch to Launch Instant EFT Checkouts for Merchants Across South Africa

Merchants that use Peach Payments to accept digital payments can now leverage Instant EFT by Peach Payments to improve conversion, reach more customers and save on card fees South Africa-based digital payments gateway Peach Payments and API fintech Stitch have partnered to enable online merchants across South Africa to accept secure, low-cost instant EFT payments.

Shoprite App Wins Big at MTN Business App of the Year Awards

Shoprite’s mobile application, with the Money Market Account functionality at its core, is the winner of Most Innovative Solution and App of the Year at this year’s MTN Business App of the Year Awards. The app supports Shoprite’s Money Market Account, a fully-fledged, transactional bank account – the first by a SA retailer – and the lowest-cost bank entry-level

Smollan & eComplete announces biggest onmi-channel retail sales & marketing partnership in South Africa

Global retail specialist Smollan, representing some of the world’s most loved FMCG and commerce brands have made a significant investment in eComplete, a turnkey end-to-end ecommerce solutions company that helps brands succeed at eCommerce. Both companies have enjoyed a close working relationship in the past – passionate about exploring end-to end solutions for brands; the

Woolworths Offers First On-Demand Omnichannel Experience Through Their Integrated Shopping App

Woolworths will become the first retailer in South Africa to offer an integrated omnichannel shopping experience through their app.  The upgrade will see the retailer’s two digital apps, Woolies Dash, its popular on-demand service, and the Woolies App, its main mobile app, integrate into one shopping platform, with a key focus on offering customers an

Fulfilment of Conditions Precedent for the Acquisition of a Controlling Shareholding in the Studio 88 Group

Shareholders are referred to the Stock Exchange News Service announcement on 13 April 2022 (Announcement) regarding the acquisition by Mr Price of 70% of the issued share capital of Blue Falcon Trading 188 (Proprietary) Limited, which owns the Studio 88 Group of businesses (Studio 88 Group or Business), from RMB Ventures Six (Proprietary) Limited (RMB

The Shoprite Group Increased Solar Capacity by 82% in 12 Months, Easing Pressure on the National Electricity Grid

Over the past 12 months, the Shoprite Group has increased its installed capacity of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems by 82% to 26,606 kWp. The 143,674m2 of solar panels at 62 sites, is equivalent to the size of 20 soccer fields. This is enough to power the equivalent of 3,735 households for one full year, thus

Makro mRewards Partners with UCount Rewards & Caltex to Give You Up to R10* Back in Rewards Points Per Litre of Fuel and Oil

Makro mRewards partners with Standard Bank UCount Rewards & Caltex to ease the fuel burden. As of 16 September 2022, Makro, one of South Africa’s longest standing retailers will offer its mRewards members up to R10* back in Rewards Points per litre of fuel and oil at participating Caltex forecourts around the country. According to

Braintree Entrenches African Retail, FMCG Expertise with Repeat Awards From LS Retail

Braintree, a trusted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner powered by Vivica Holdings, has been named as an LS Retail Diamond and LS One Platinum partner for 2022, further entrenching the company as an expert in providing digital solutions to the retail and FMCG sectors across Africa. LS Retail is a leading global provider of all-in-one business

MACmobile Launches MAC eCom Platform, Bringing Digital Transformation to South African General Trade

MACmobile, leading provider of cloud-based solutions for the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) space, has launched MAC eCom Platform, an end-to-end eCommerce platform developed specifically to bring digital transformation to South African general trade and the main market space. MAC eCom Platform offers a complete B2B platform with built-in warehousing, distribution, and sales modules to allow

Pick n Pay and Mr D Take Online Grocery Shopping to the Next Level

By working together, Pick n Pay and Mr D have just made online grocery shopping much better, easier, and more exciting for customers. Using the Mr D app, all your favourite Pick n Pay products can now be delivered right to your door. By bringing together the best of Pick n Pay and Mr D,

Celebrating 25 Years and Nearly R1 Billion in Sustainable Impact with MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet

South Africa’s business, government and NGO leaders came together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet (MySchool), Woolworths innovative, multiple award-winning community loyalty and corporate social responsibility programme.  The programme has provided support of around R934 million to more than 8 000 schools and NGO beneficiaries across the country, who have benefited from

Woolies and FlySafair Give Travelers a Reason to Chuckle

Woolworths and FlySafair partner to bring travel perks to local travellers. As the year-end fatigue begins to set in, and with the start of October school holidays, South Africa’s much-loved retailer, Woolworths, and FlySafair have joined forces in an exciting partnership that is sure to give travellers a reason to smile. Passengers travelling on selected

Shoprite Group Opens a Store a Day During September, Creating 521 New Jobs

The Shoprite Group has opened 31 new stores – equating to more than one a day – during the month of September, creating 521 new jobs. With more than 145 000 employees, the Group is South Africa’s largest private sector employer – a trend which is set to continue as it plans to open 275 new

Serving Up Sustainability

SPAR’s Chikka Chicken insists on environmental responsibility across the value chain Sustainability at SPAR, and more specifically their freshly in-store prepared Chikka Chicken, is about joining the dots, not ticking the boxes. By embedding environmental responsibility into every activity in the value chain, Chikka Chicken aims to ensure that customers not only get great-tasting chicken

Shoprite Provides Affordable Financing Options to its Suppliers, Including SMMEs

The Shoprite Group now helps its suppliers with access to funding at the most affordable rates with the launch of a new supply chain finance product. The CredX finance product, which is often cheaper than bank financing, is available to all of the Group’s suppliers and is expected to assist especially SMMEs, for whom cash flow constraints and access

New Builders+ Benefits Programme Helps Shoppers Get More for Their Money

The popularity of rewards programs among South Africans remains high, as many consumers continue to seek ways to stretch their pockets, and find ways to make the most out of their everyday purchases. As a result of this popularity, more and more South African brands are including rewards as part of their customer relations strategy.

Celebrating Our South Africaness, this Heritage Month

By Nivasha Pather, Category Marketing Manager, Nestlé East, and Southern Africa Culture is an inherent part of our identity as South Africans and in art, we have found many a means to reflect that which makes us proud of our heritage. Particularly for our diverse country, art’s ability to reflect our heritage also breaks boundaries,

Nestlé Esar Celebrates a Year of Partnering With Tembisa’s Waste Reclaimers in the Re-Imagine Tomorrow Pilot Project

In 2021, Nestlé East & Southern Africa Region (ESAR) joined forces with tech start-up Kudoti, waste buy-back centre, Destination Green, and waste reclaimers from Tembisa and together launched RE-Imagine Tomorrow, an ambitious waste management initiative. The project applies principles of the circular economy in tackling poor waste management, and has, over the last year, been

SPAR Selects CitrusAd to Deliver a Personalised Experience to Online Customers Worldwide

SPAR International has selected CitrusAd, a leading tech platform built for retail, as a worldwide supplier of e-grocery retail media solutions. CitrusAd’s retail media platform will form part of SPAR’s digital transformation journey, supporting the delivery of a personalised, targeted, experience to consumers online, matching SPAR’s offline approach. SPAR is one of the most recognised

SPAR Enters International Partnership Agreement with Whywaste

SPAR International has announced a worldwide partnership with food tech company Whywaste to support their food waste reduction strategy at retail. SPAR country organisations will be able to use Whywaste’s digital solutions in their day-to-day operations to reduce food waste in stores.  Portfolio of solutions Whywaste provides a portfolio of solutions that addresses food waste-related

Eastern Cape’s First Checkers FreshX Supermarket Creates 138 New Jobs in Gqeberha

The newly revamped Boardwalk Mall is home to the Eastern Cape’s first world-class Checkers FreshX supermarket, which has created new jobs for 138 employees. The store has a total of 202 employees and will be managed by Warren Kappadu who joined the retailer in 2018. Checkers FreshX Boardwalk Mall will offer customers a unique shopping

Makro & Pernod Ricard Partner to Bring You the First Makro Distillery Digital Experience Exclusive to Makro Woodmead

Makro launches a first in South Africa – digital premium liquor experience, nestled at their Woodmead Liquor store in Johannesburg North. In partnership with Distiller Pernod Ricard, the official ribbon cutting event took place on Thursday evening with interactive digital experiences showcasing the distillers’ topline brands; Chivas, Glenlivet and Jameson. The newly revamped Makro Woodmead

Opinion Piece: Perceived Customer Value is the Only Metric That Matters When Measuring the Success of App Deployments in the FMCG Space

By Andrew Dawson, MD of MACmobile Digital transformation has been identified as a key driver for optimisation in the South African Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) space, particularly in the main market. Bringing a consumer-like, app-driven ecommerce experience to this market is an area that has received a lot of attention and investment, and several apps

Massmart Sees Growth in Private Brand Food Offering

As South African consumers continue to turn to private brand products to make their money go further, Massmart’s ‘M’ frozen convenience offering has experienced exciting growth of over 30% at Makro between January and June this year. ‘M’ is of equivalent quality to leading brands in the same categories and the brand is aggressively developing

Retail Trends | 2022 & Beyond

Mike Smollan, Chief Growth and Innovation Officer at Smollan looks at retail trends for the third and fourth quarters of this year and beyond, and what these means for growth. Gears switched at the beginning of 2022 as we entered a new phase in a retail eco-system that was still massaging aches and pains and

Rotisserie Chicken Packaging And An Additional 1 000 Woolworths Foods Packaging Items Are Now Recyclable In South Africa

In the week of National Recycling, International Coastal Clean-up and World Clean-up days, Woolworths has confirmed that with the recent opening of a new PET Wash Plant in Cape Town an additional 1 000 of the retailer’s food packaging items can now be recycled in South Africa.  Another exciting packaging improvement is the current rollout of

Continued Strong Revenue Growth From RFG

RFG Holdings increased revenue by 21.2% in the 11 months to August 2022, the group announced in a trading update released on the stock exchange news service (SENS). In the first six months of the 2022 financial year, RFG reported revenue growth of 20.9%. Chief executive officer Pieter Hanekom said growth was driven by ongoing

Carbon-Neutral Online Shopping Launches in South Africa

Local startup makes it possible to fight climate change while shopping online With a goal to curb carbon emissions, South African startup Curbon, will make carbon-neutral online shopping possible through the launch of the country’s very first plugin created to help fight climate change. Curbon’s unique offering gives shoppers the opportunity to take direct, meaningful climate

SPAR Athienitis Reopens in Zimbabwe Following Extensive Upgrade

SPAR Athienitis, situated in the Fife Avenue shopping centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, has reopened its doors after extensive renovations. The new-look SPAR Supermarket boasts wider shopping aisles, an increased range, and a new gifting and home décor section The store has undergone a significant transformation, with an increase of 600m2 (about twice the area of

The 2022 South African Digital Customer Experience Report

The impact that online – in all its facets – has on offline sales is much greater than perceived This year the fourth 2022 South African Digital Customer Experience Report reveals the phenomenal impact that the combination of social selling, reviews and online browsing – in all of its facets – has on offline sales:

Fuel Retailers Should Grab Diversification Opportunities to Grow in a Difficult Market

South African consumers are cheering a small decrease in petrol and diesel prices for September, but for fuel retailers, the industry remains a tough industry characterised by low margins and rising costs. Diversifying revenue streams is a favoured lever most fuel retailers have for increasing their profitability in this difficult operating environment, says Steven Heilbron,

Why Last-Mile Delivery Tech Allows Businesses to Meet Consumer Expectations of Ecommerce, Head-on

“Convenience” is no longer just a buzzword in online retail– it’s everything. The e-commerce explosion in the past two years, both internationally and in South Africa, has heightened customer expectations to the extent that failing to deliver online orders on time can literally make or break a business. Retailers that don’t shape up in terms

Shoprite Group | A Record Result in a Challenging Year

The results, from continuing operations, for the financial year under review are for a 52-week period compared to 53 weeks in the previous financial year. Throughout we are showing the 53 weeks to 4 July 2021 as the comparative period, unless stated otherwise. Sale of merchandise increased by 9.6% to R184.1 billion Basic earnings per share

Successful Execution of WHL Strategy Pays Dividends

HIGHLIGHTS • Full year dividend significantly increased, up by almost 250% to 229,5c • FBH turnaround demonstrated through strong operational and financial performance, with aEBIT growth of almost 49% • Australian second half performance outperformed expectations, with David Jones aEBIT up 86% and Country Road Group aEBIT up 19%. • Foods business continues to generate

Choosing the Right Delivery Partner for Your e-Commerce Offering

Seamlessly integrating is the golden nugget, amongst several other factors worth considering Keeping customers happy in the online retail space requires e-commerce businesses to be at the top of their game. Where traditionally a customer would visit a physical store, buy an item, and hopefully go away feeling satisfied with their purchase, online retailers not

Massmart Releases Interim Results

Highlights 4.3% Comparable store sales growth from continuing operations 50% Online sales growth Expense growth 3% below inflation Potential Offer by Walmart to acquire Massmart shares it does not already ownfor ZAR62 per share Potential Offer represents a 53% premium on 26 August 2022 closing share price CEO succession also announced Results Summary Total sales

Sabi Opens an Office in Johannesburg to Enable the Digital Transformation of South Africa’s ZAR 157 Billion Informal Economy

South Africa’s micro, small and medium-sized traders can now improve their cash flow with more reliable supply chains and better customer marketing using Sabi, Africa’s leading B2B platform for goods and services distribution. SABI is partnering with Vumele to enable and empower South Africa’s informal economy. Sabi recently opened an office in Johannesburg and already

SA Retailers Need to Adapt to the Declining Middle-class

From one crisis to the next, consumer habits are changing Just as the world was returning to some kind of ‘normality’ it didn’t take long for war in Europe, surging inflation, soaring fuel and energy prices, along with severe bouts of load-shedding to cast a particularly dark shadow over the first half of 2022. Now,

Green Shoots for eThekwini’s Manufacturing Sector

eThekwini’s manufacturing Clusters unlock growth and deliver jobs Since the onset of the pandemic, eThekwini Municipality has been driving the development of the manufacturing sector and now, many of the initiatives are ready to scale and are delivering positive results. According to Takalani Rathiyaya, Head of the Economic Development Programmes Department at the eThekwini Municipality,

Smollan Benefits From Long-Term Partnership with FleetDomain

Since 2020, Smollan, a global sales and marketing services company, has been using FleetDomain, an Argility Technology Group company, to manage its fleet of around 2 000 vehicles in South Africa. By integrating its software with Smollan’s accounting systems and banking partners, FleetDomain has enabled Smollan to contain costs and manage its fleet much more effectively,

Meet South Africa’s Lowest Cost Bank Account

Shoprite’s Money Market Account is now a full-fledged bank account. It already provides almost two million banked and unbanked customers the best deal on the market. It’s official: Shoprite’s Money Market Account is now a full-fledged, transactional bank account, the first ever offered by a South African retailer – and the lowest cost entry-level bank

Zapper and Stitch Team Up to Offer South Africans Fast, Secure One-Click Payments

Zapper users can now link their bank accounts in the Zapper app to pay their favourite merchants securely at POS, in just one click South African independent mobile payments, insights, loyalty, and rewards platform Zapper has teamed up with payments and data API Stitch via its LinkPay product, to bring the latest in payments innovation

Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index falls from 52.2 points in June to 47.6 in July

The seasonally adjusted Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) further declined in July, suggesting that the manufacturing sector experienced a tough start to the third quarter following a weak second quarter. The headline index fell from 52.2 points in June to 47.6 in July. This is the first reading below the neutral 50-point threshold since July

Shoprite Takes Out Biggest Sustainability Loan and First Green Loan in the Retail Sector

The Shoprite Group has finalised sustainability-linked loans totalling R3.5 billion for investments to expand its key environmental programmes as part of its wider sustainability strategy. These include a R2 billion loan from Standard Bank (the bank’s biggest in the retail sector to date), and a R800 million sustainability-linked loan and a R700 million green loan

Retail Trends – 2022 & Beyond

Mike Smollan, Chief Growth and Innovation Officer at Smollan looks at retail trends for the third and fourth quarters of this year and beyond, and what these means for growth Gears switched at the beginning of 2022 as we entered a new phase in a retail eco-system that was still massaging aches and pains and

Global Retail Brand LC (Les Copains) Waikiki Joins the Tingg by Cellulant Digital Payment Ecosystem in Zambia

LC Waikiki customers will now be able to make payments seamlessly via mobile money in all their branches in Zambia  Cellulant (www.Cellulant.io) Zambia has signed a partnership agreement with leading fashion retailer LC Waikiki, which will enable customers to make payments from all LC Waikiki stores across Zambia through the Tingg digital payment platform. As