Boxing clever

You can be sure that the cost of living crisis is hitting the consumer where it hurts most when an organisation as august as the British Sandwich & Food to Go Association issues a dread warning that the input costs of a BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) have risen by more than 50% in the past few years.

Price pressures on the nation’s favourite pork-based lunchtime snack can be seen as a microcosm of the broader economy, reeling from huge jumps in energy prices, labour shortages and the direct effects of the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil and, together with Russia, it supplies about a quarter of the world’s wheat, so the disruption in the region will inevitably lead to rampant food price inflation.

Pressure on the consumer is going to be fierce, and Pick n Pay appears to be doing a tidy job of giving its core customers lower prices and better value, while also targeting the more affluent consumer with its refurbished Select supermarkets.

The company has targeted

R3bn of savings through increased efficiencies, and it is accelerating the development of its Boxer limited-range discount business.

Pick n Pay bounced back strongly from the damage and disruption of the civil unrest in July 2021, and it recovered its material losses in full in the year under its Sasria insurance. Its business interruption claims remain open, and though it has received interim payments from its insurers of R145m, it is expecting to settle the balance in the 2023 financial year.

The retail environment will remain tough, but Pick n Pay is coping well.

It’s doing a tidy job of giving its core customers lower prices and better value