Pick n Pay’s online sales grew 35.4% in the six months to 30 August, in line with the growth Shoprite reported for Checkers Sixty60 in its latest financial year. But the retailer, which reported interim results on Monday, gave no rand figure for the business, so there is no way to tell how much ground it is making up.

Pick n Pay called online “another standout performance”. It was the fastest-growing part of a business whose overall turnover stood still. Turnover in the Pick n Pay segment, which excludes the Boxer discount chain, was flat at R36.4-billion. Like-for-like sales, which strip out store openings and closures, grew 2.4% at company-owned supermarkets in South Africa.

Sixty60’s sales grew 34.5% to R25.5-billion in Shoprite’s year to June, about 9.4% of group turnover and, on TechCentral’s calculations, more than a third of Shoprite’s growth.

In its asap! app, Pick n Pay added clothing, which delivered turnover “well ahead” of budget, and Penny, a conversational AI shopping assistant built on Google’s Gemini models that lets customers build a basket by talking, typing or photographing a recipe, a shopping list or an empty pantry shelf.

Pick n Pay said Penny had improved order conversion and increased average order value but gave no figures. It calls Penny “South Africa’s first fully integrated AI-powered grocery shopping assistant”.

Shoprite put its own assistant, Pixie, into Sixty60 in April. Pixie began with predictive reordering, though, and Penny got there first with text, voice and image input, a gap Shoprite closed in August. Shoprite said in July that 98% of its paying Xtra Savings Plus members, then the only customers who could use Pixie, had tried it within three months.

Losses narrow

The group’s headline loss narrowed 31.9% to R299-million, on turnover up 2.4% to R60.5-billion. Pick n Pay’s own trading loss narrowed to R516-million from R621-million. The Pick n Pay business’s operations costs rose 5% to R2.2-billion, partly because of higher diesel and electricity costs.

The group has withdrawn the section 189A retrenchment process it began in May after reaching agreement with labour on a new store staffing model. It is targeting break-even at the Pick n Pay business by FY2029. – (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media