Being able to have groceries delivered to you rather than having to venture out into public has become incredibly important over the course of the pandemic.

One company that has seen great success with home deliveries is Shoprite through its Checkers Sixty60 offering and now it’s investing into that offering even more.

Together with RTT Group, which has played a pivotal role in the last-mile logistics of Sixty60 deliveries, a joint venture has been established to further improve upon the offering. The joint venture will see Shoprite Group and RTT Group owning 50 percent of the venture each.

“This transaction is in line with our digital strategy,” says Shoprite Group chief executive officer, Pieter Engelbrecht.

“Owning the last mile home delivery aspect of our Sixty60 service is an important part of building out our digital ecosystem for customers. We consider the combined capability we have built with RTT to be a critical competitive advantage and key to Sixty60’s rapid growth. This RTT On-Demand joint venture will allow the Group the opportunity to continue enhancing our order fulfilment and last-mile delivery capabilities whilst giving us the opportunity to grow our precision retailing efforts for our customers”.

We’re curious to see how this new venture is implemented. With a litany of brands under its belt including House & Home, Shoprite, Freshmark and others, Shoprite could ostensibly begin offering ecommerce services beyond solely Checkers, provided this venture is successful.

Importantly, Engelbrecht notes that as many as 4 000 new jobs will be created on the back of this venture. This projection draws on the expansion of Sixty60 into new areas which would require more drivers, support staff and staff on the floor who assist with fulfilling orders.

“The benefits arising from formalising this relationship with RTT On-Demand should extend beyond our customers to also include our employees, suppliers and shareholders and we are incredibly pleased to be moving forward with our e-commerce plans on this basis,” adds the Shoprite Group CEO.

The value of the joint venture has not yet been disclosed and the success or failure of the venture is subject to both commercial and regulatory conditions.