Business News Online

Africa’s second-largest food retailer, Pick n Pay, announced on Thursday that it was opening its first store in Mozambique, located in Maputo.

The Maputo store is about 3 500 square metres and will include a clothing and liquor offering.

Pick n Pay’s head of group enterprises, Dallas Langman, said: “The Mozambique market offers good opportunities to present a high-quality offering from Pick n Pay.

“Our stores will present an appealing array of products to Maputo residents which they may not have encountered before, offering substantial competition to other retailers in the Mozambican market,” continued Langman.

Pick n Pay signed a franchise territorial agreement with retail franchising group Retail Masters in Mozambique, providing it with the essential benefit of expert insights into the local market.

The new store has already employed 250 Mozambican citizens and Langman said the group aimed to support local suppliers as much as possible.

Pick n Pay’s expansion into Mozambique follows the opening of its second outlet in Zambia, in March.

The group’s strategy of expanding into Africa has mainly been through partnering with locals or selling franchises to locals. Read more…

AP Photo Christian Noriega of Hayward Calif., takes his checked bags to the security drop off at Philadelphia International Airport Monday in Philadelphia. Noriega said he spent about $163 to check three bags with American Airlines. The government says that airlines collected $3.4 billion in baggage fees last year, up 24 percent from 2009.

NEW YORK — U.S. airlines collected $3.4 billion in bag fees last year. The 24 percent increase from 2009 shows how the airlines are increasingly reliant on charging for once-free services to make money.

The fees — typically $50 round-trip for the first piece of checked luggage — are one of the few bright spots for an industry that is caught between rising fuel costs and customers who expect rock-bottom airfares.

“If it weren’t for the fees, the airlines would most likely be losing money,” said Jim Corridore, airline analyst with Standard & Poor’s.

That’s little comfort to fliers who’ve felt nickel-and-dimed by the airlines over the past three years as fees have proliferated. And a

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In a move that could boost solar energy use in homes, Google Inc. is creating a $280-million fund to help finance rooftop installations.

The Internet search giant, an avid investor in renewable energy technologies, said the deal with SolarCity, a solar panel installation company based in San Mateo, Calif., is the largest green investment it has ever made.

“Google’s leading the way and other companies could follow suit,” said Lyndon Rive, chief executive of SolarCity. “It’s not just about a dramatic environmental impact, it’s also a good return.”

The Solar Energy Industries Assn., a trade group, said residential installations nationwide have grown steadily and are expected to keep expanding this year. It said that by the end of 2010, home solar panels were capable of producing 74 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 74,000 average California homes. That was up 33% from the beginning of the year.

More affordable financing options were key to the increase, analysts said. Read more…

As Walmart expands its international business, the company wants to bring ideas from South Africa’s Massmart to other markets, company executives said Thursday.

Walmart’s hotly debated $2.4-billion purchase of a majority interest in Massmart will put Walmart in the building supply business, one of a variety of Massmart store formats. The company expects the acquisition to close in June.

Almost all of Massmart’s stores — 263 of them — are in South Africa. But JP Suarez, senior vice-president of international business development, said the world’s largest retailer intends to expand Massmart’s footprint in Southern Africa, where the chain operates in more than a dozen countries as far north as Ghana and Nigeria.

One priority is to offer more refrigerated food, a category lacking among Massmart and its competitors, Suarez said.

“It’s going to be a real win for the customer. Read more…

I keep looking for coverage of how a Canada Post mail strike might affect Canadian small businesses and not finding it, which makes me wonder if maybe I’m one of the last people in the country who cares whether there’s a mail strike or not.

The closest I’ve come to finding any discussion of the issue is this snippet from The Kingston Whig Standard:

“…the impact of a postal stoppage on business would be less than what it was in previous postal strikes, said Doug Ritchie, managing director of the Downtown Kingston! Business Improvement Area.

“The mail gets less and less used on a daily basis,” Ritchie said.”

Personally, I still get cheques in the mail (although to be honest I haven’t sent a cheque through the mail to anyone in a looonnng time), so a prolonged mail strike could certainly be potentially damaging to my business’s bottom line.

So I am concerned. I’m not panicked, though. I’ll make other arrangements if need be.

What about you? Do you depend on Canada Post for deliveries?

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EAST WHITELAND — American Executive Centers moved its Chester County location from the Exton area to Malvern, getting bigger and more high-tech in the process.

The executive suites provider is now located in Brandywine Realty Trust’s Valleybrooke Corporate Center at 101 Lindenwood Drive, spending $1.5 million to make the move.

“It was a big investment,” said G. Michael Howard, president of American Executive. The reason for the investment: “there is a lot of demand in the marketplace, a positive pulse.”

Its previous location was 102 Pickering Way.

American Executive has a 10-year lease at its new location, home to 56 private offices for on-site clients and a number of virtual clients.

In addition to the real estate, each of the seven American Executive Centers offers information technology support and administrative services that assist established businesses with day-to-day operations. I

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