Pick n Pay CEO warns that rising prices are going to hit South Africans

Pick n Pay CEO Pieter Boone has had a stormy 10 months in charge of South Africa’s third-largest supermarket chain by sales – and he says the task is unlikely to get easier.

The fading of the latest Omicron-driven Covid-19 wave and increasingly loose pandemic restrictions have encouraged consumers to spend and travel with greater ease, but the impact of rising fuel, manufacturing and logistics costs is looming, Boone said. 

“I want to give a word of caution in relation to what is approaching us,” the 54-year-old said in an interview from Cape Town. “Certain of these price increases we will need to absorb and some we will have to pass on to the consumer.”

Boone has already had to navigate some tough, South Africa- specific challenges. Three months after he took the CEO job, violent civil unrest swept across two key provinces, with rioters torching depots and delivery trucks and looting