• Shoprite Group, who owns Checkers supermarkets says it had to spend R1.3 billion on diesel to stave off loadshedding in the last quarter.
• It joins some of the largest companies in South Africa in bleeding huge swathes of money to power outages.
• Despite these costs, the Group saw sales of R215 billion.

South African retail giant Shoprite Group, owners of Checkers, Shoprite, OK, and more says it had to cough out an eyewatering R1.3 billion to maintain diesel generators at its stores due to higher stages of loadshedding.

Last year the retailer only spent R226 million on diesel expenses for its generators, which is nothing to balk at either but far less than what it spent in the 52 weeks until 2nd July 2023.

Loadshedding also stopped the group from repurchasing shares under the authorised share buy-back programme “in favour of preserving liquidity in the event of higher stages of load-shedding.”

This is according to the group’s latest financial results, which report sales of R215 billion, and a final dividend of 415 cents per share.

Its South African supermarkets saw revenues of R147.4 billion, led by its Checkers stores which contributed 39.9 percent of the segments earnings.

Another major win for Shoprite Group is the increasing popularity of its Sixty60 delivery platform.

According to the group, sales for the app increased by 81.5 percent, with the retailer expanding the stores that offer the service to 466 compared to 300 in 2022.

Shoprite joins some of South Africa’s largest corporations when it comes to coughing out huge swathes of money to stave off higher stages of loadshedding.

Higher stages of outages demand longer periods of the running of generators, which amounts to higher deisel expenses for businesses. Absa Bank spent R313 million on equipment to mitigate outages in the last quarter.

Telco MTN spent R695 million on costs to run its towers during extended loadshedding in the last few months of 2022. In general the country’s economy loses around a billion Rand for every day that Stage 4 loadshedding and higher is implemented.

South Africans are dealing with Stage 6 power cuts as of time of writing, with Eskom only set to reduce the loadshedding level by the end of the week.