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# Pick n Pay has hired its next chief executive from Woolworths, and he only starts in February
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pay-next-chief-executive-woolworths/
- Published: 2026-09-24T02:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-24T02:14:59.000Z
- Description: Spencer Sonn takes the chief executive-designate title on 1 February 2027 and works alongside Sean Summers for fourteen months before the handover.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Pick n Pay has found its next chief executive at the competitor down the road, and it has given him an unusually long runway. Spencer Sonn takes the chief executive-designate title on 1 February 2027, after 26 years at Woolworths South Africa, five of them as managing director of the food division. He has been Woolworths' chief customer officer since April 2025, and the board that hired him counts more than 30 years of retail leadership behind him, in South Africa and in New Zealand, where he also ran the Woolworths business.

Sean Summers is not going anywhere for a while. His contract runs to May 2028, and BusinessTech reports that is the point at which Sonn succeeds him, which leaves the two of them in the building together for fourteen months. Pick n Pay calls it a planned and orderly transition, and says the overlap gives Sonn ample time to settle into executive leadership and work with Summers on the turnaround.

## What Sonn is walking into

Pick n Pay is not a healthy company yet. Summers was brought back in 2023, after Pieter Boone left and the group posted the first loss in its existence, to run a turnaround that started with the company technically insolvent. He had already done the job once, from 1999 to 2006\. Three years into the second go, growth is thin: turnover across the group rose 2.7% in the first five months of the financial year, and 2.5% on a like-for-like basis over the 20 weeks to 19 July.

The growth that does exist is not in the supermarkets. Boxer lifted turnover 7.2%, and online sales grew 37.5%, carried by Pick n Pay asap! and Pick n Pay groceries on the Mr D app. The core Pick n Pay business in South Africa went the other way, with turnover slightly down as the group finished closing or converting company-owned supermarkets that were not working. It is still in discussions about further store closures and possible retrenchments.

## What the board says it is buying

The board's case for Sonn is the food and grocery record, at home and abroad, and its confidence that he can build on the progress already made. Summers said Sonn had expressed enormous admiration for the values and founding principles that Pick n Pay was built on. Sonn's own line was that he is looking forward to playing his part in continuing the turnaround and being part of the family. The company also singled out his management experience abroad as particularly valuable.

Sonn arrives in February with the store closure talks still running, Boxer still growing faster than the supermarkets he will inherit, and fourteen months of working alongside the man he is replacing.