> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Roundup — Friday, 4 September 2026 - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-4-september-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-04T04:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-04T03:59:59.000Z - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: The Roundup Today's edition Bread Winners Good morning. Tiger Brands has put more than 800 bread stands on South African pavements and wants 3 000 of them, at about R2 700 a stand. Discovery spent an estimated R15 billion on a bank for much the same reason, and seven in ten of that bank's new customers had never bought anything from Discovery before. And Woolworths has decided the food aisle deserves the money the clothing floor has been getting. Everyone is paying to stand where the customer already is. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--35-.png) --- STAND AND DELIVER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-albany.png) ## Albany has more than 800 people selling bread at taxi ranks, and Tiger Brands wants 3 000 Selling bread from a stand on a pavement is not usually a corporate distribution strategy. Albany's owner has made it one. There are more than 800 branded bread stands at taxi ranks, bus stations and roadsides across five provinces, each run by a single person, and Tiger Brands wants 3 000 of them within a year. The company has been working the informal market since 2020\. The arrangement is built so the vendor starts with nothing down: Tiger Brands supplies the stand and delivers bread daily through Albany's own network, so nobody buys stock up front. Vendors arrive by referral from trade and community contacts. **What each side puts in:** - Tiger Brands supplies a stand it values at about R2 700, plus marketing material, and delivers the bread daily. - The vendor supplies the labour, every day of the week, and sells 20 to 30 loaves a day at roughly R2 profit a loaf. - That works out at about R1 300 a month for someone trading daily, on the company's own figures. Tiger Brands does not call that a job. It calls it an entrepreneurial opportunity, in a country where Stats SA put unemployment among 15 to 34 year olds at 47.4% in August. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/albany-is-selling-bread-off-the-pavement-and-wants-3-000-stands-doing-it/) --- WELL BANKED ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-discovery--1-.png) ## Discovery Bank turned its first full-year profit, and seven in ten of its new customers came from outside Discovery is an insurer that decided it needed a bank. Reported estimates put the spend at about R15 billion, and on Thursday that bank posted its first full-year profit: R370 million. Set those two numbers next to each other and it looks like an expensive hobby. Set the bank next to what it feeds and it looks like the reason the rest of the group keeps finding new customers. Discovery does not really want a bank. It wants what it calls an orchestrating layer, the place customers reach medical scheme cover, life cover and investments from. That only works if the bank brings in people the group does not already have, and it does. 70% of its new business last year came from people who were not Discovery customers already, on a client base up 26% to 1.57 million and deposits of R27.2 billion. Fees and commissions earn the bank more than lending does, so growing it ties up less capital than a normal retail bank's growth would, and it is less exposed when the Reserve Bank moves rates. Reported figures put the bank's own target at R3 billion by 2029, roughly eight times what it has just delivered. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-bank-has-stopped-costing-its-parent-money-and-started-feeding-it-customers/) --- BAGEL BITE **In which country was paper first invented?** **A.** Egypt **B.** Greece **C.** China --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-Woolworths-1.png) **Woolworths will not fund its divisions on equal terms again, and food is where the money goes.** Group sales rose 4.3% to R84.5 billion in the year to June. Underneath that, food lifted its operating earnings 3.2%, while fashion, beauty and home saw theirs fall 14.1% to R1.38 billion, even as Home on its own grew 11.7%. New chief executive Sam Ngumeni says the money and the floor space now go to food first. Net trading space across the clothing division has already shrunk 0.7% over the year. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-is-done-treating-its-divisions-the-same-and-fashion-is-the-one-that-pays/) **Aspen sold nothing extra all year and still made 14% more money.** Revenue from the businesses it is keeping was flat at R34.9 billion, while operating earnings rose to R7.7 billion once currency swings are stripped out, out of efficiency work rather than sales. Mounjaro, the weight-loss and diabetes injection Aspen distributes here for Eli Lilly, carried its biggest division. Selling the Asia-Pacific business for R28 billion left Aspen holding more cash than debt. The share closed 7.35% lower at R145\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/aspens-sales-stood-still-and-the-money-it-keeps-went-up-14/) **Cashbuild ended the year with 317 stores and wants about 15 more in the coming one.** Chief executive Werner de Jager says suitable shopping-centre developments are scarce, so only two of this year's nine openings were traditional Cashbuild stores and the rest were smaller formats. Revenue rose 6% to R12.1 billion while operating profit fell 15% to R292 million, after a R34.9 million loss on the way out of Malawi. Takings in the first seven weeks of the new year are flat. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/cashbuild-sold-more-kept-more-of-every-rand-and-still-made-less/) **African exporters got two more duty-free years, tucked inside the bill that keeps America's government open.** The House passed it 370 to 48 on Tuesday, the Senate having done so in early August, and the extension runs to the end of 2028 once President Trump signs. South African citrus, cars and steel are among the goods it covers. Duty-free is still not tariff-free: industry-specific tariffs apply on top, and countries found not to have kept forced labour out of their supply chains can be charged extra. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/africas-duty-free-access-to-america-gets-two-more-years-tucked-inside-a-shutdown-bill/) **The medical scheme industry has costed making membership compulsory, and puts the saving at up to 30%.** The Health Funders Association, whose members include Discovery Health Medical Scheme, Momentum and Fedhealth, commissioned modelling on signing up everyone earning above the R99 000 tax threshold. The low end of that range adjusts for age alone; the high end assumes the healthier people currently outside come in. The average scheme beneficiary was 31.7 years old in 2005 and 34.5 by 2024\. The association says affordability has to be fixed first. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-medical-scheme-industry-has-costed-a-plan-to-make-joining-compulsory/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--31-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--34--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0bg5LNXkz2R%5FShzUCs&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. China** Before true paper, people wrote on materials like silk, bamboo, or animal skins, which were costly or heavy. In China, papermaking used cheap materials such as tree bark, rags, and old fishing nets mashed into pulp. The invention spread slowly along trade routes and eventually reached the rest of the world centuries later. The ancient Egyptians used papyrus, but that is made differently and is not the same as paper. --- That's your Friday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.