Woolworths Holdings grew online food sales by 18.3% in the year to end-June, just over half the rate of Checkers Sixty60 – and Sixty60 managed that growth off a base more than five times larger.

Both retailers reported on the 52 weeks ended 28 June 2026, and Shoprite published its results on Tuesday, a day before Woolworths.

Sixty60 sales rose 34.7% to R25.5-billion, group CEO Pieter Engelbrecht told the results presentation, adding R6.6-billion in a single year. Woolworths’ entire online food business turned over R3.94-billion, up from R3.33-billion. Put differently, Sixty60 added more sales in one year than Woolworths’ online food operation generates in total.

Sixty60 now accounts for 11.1% of Shoprite’s Supermarkets RSA sales. Woolworths’ online channel accounts for about 7% of its South African food, fashion, beauty and home turnover. TechCentral has previously set out how Sixty60 built and held that lead, including its decision to pick from stores rather than centralised warehouses.

Food is the part of the Woolworths online business that is working. Everything else is not.

The channel split in the group’s annual financial statements shows online turnover in fashion, beauty and home of R881-million, down from R887-million a year earlier. That is a decline in absolute rand terms, before inflation. Woolworths’ results announcement noted only that online’s contribution to South African fashion, beauty and home sales declined marginally to 6.3%; it did not spell out that online turnover in the segment had gone backwards in rand.

Opposite directions

Country Road Group’s online sales fell 4.6% to R3.4-billion, but that is an Australian and New Zealand business and does not belong in a South African comparison. Strip it out and Woolworths’ South African online turnover was R4.82-billion against R4.22-billion, growth of 14.3%. Including Country Road, group online turnover grew just 5.7%, to R8.22-billion.

The results announcement led on a different number: on-demand delivery revenue up 19.6%. That figure covers Woolies Dash specifically, a subset of the online channel, and it is the highest growth rate available in the disclosure.

The investment numbers point in opposite directions.

Woolworths added R444-million to computer software during the year, down from R802-million – a cut of nearly 45%. It also took a R91-million impairment on computer software, which the notes attribute mainly to writing off previously capitalised software development costs after reassessing the future economic benefits expected from them. There was no equivalent charge in the prior year. Group capital expenditure fell 16% to R2.58-billion, so the software line was cut far harder than the total.

Shoprite spent an additional R1.2-billion on digital capabilities over the same period, and starts an SAP S/4Hana implementation in the 2027 financial year. In April, it launched Pixie, an AI shopping assistant built in-house by ShopriteX, in beta on the Sixty60 app for Xtra Savings Plus members.

Woolworths opened its second dark store for Dash in Wynberg, Cape Town, in June, following its first in the Cape Town CBD in 2024. But Checkers had the head start where it counted: Sixty60 launched in 2019, Dash the following year, and Sixty60’s scale comes from picking in almost a thousand stores rather than from dedicated facilities. The gap has been widening for years: at the half-year stage, Dash revenue grew 23% against Sixty60’s 34.6%. Two years earlier, Dash was growing at more than 50% a year.

Group CEO Sam Ngumeni took over on 1 June, four weeks before the financial year ended, so this is substantially Roy Bagattini’s last set of numbers. Ngumeni has a strategic review under way that the group says will give every part of the portfolio a clear role and a credible path to improved returns. The online channel outside food is one of the parts that needs one. — Reporting with assistance from Fanie van Rooyen, © 2026 NewsCentral Media