COMPANY COMMENT: New-look Shoprite has its finger on the pulse
A new and younger management team likes the look of Africa’s population doubling by 2050
Long ago, when Checkers was part of Tradegro and no one would have contemplated an upstart like Whitey Basson swooping in to take over the struggling operation, it had a severe problem with shrinkage. It wasn’t just the odd pallet going astray; pantechnicons would disappear and containers dropped out of sight. Management seemed incapable of dealing with the problem and put a lot of it down to the turbulent political times. Less was said about their inability to track tens of millions of rand of stock. How things have changed. On Tuesday, management presented the 2017 results in one of the huge distribution centres that lie at the heart of its supply chain. The organisational thinking behind these distribution centres is critical to the group’s ability to optimise its inventory and minimise shrinkage. It is Shoprite’s big competitive advantage and it didn’t come easily or cheaply. But it certainly seems to have been worth it. Perhaps someone who takes care of the group’s archives mig...
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