South Africa’s online retail market is growing at around 22.5% this year. For retailers heading into Black Friday and the festive season, there is a fairly obvious question behind that number: what happens if your business suddenly has to process, pack and deliver 20% more orders?

It is a question Sahil Affriya, founder and CEO of multi-courier logistics platform Shiprazor, believes retailers should be answering now, rather than in November.

The newly released Online Retail in South Africa 2026 report, produced by World Wide Worx in partnership with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Afrika, and supported by Shiprazor, forecasts that South Africa’s online retail market will reach R159 billion in 2026.

On a turnover-weighted basis, the market is expanding at approximately 22.5% this year, between five and ten times the rate of physical retail. The report also shows just how much bigger the market has become: online retail is expected to add more turnover during 2026 alone than the entire South African online retail market generated in 2020.

That is good news for ecommerce. But growth at that pace has consequences.

More orders mean more pressure on stock systems, warehouses, customer-service teams, courier capacity and returns. And with retailers typically reluctant to make significant changes to business-critical technology once peak trading begins, the window to find and fix weaknesses is getting smaller.

“Twenty-two percent growth sounds fantastic until you start thinking about what it means on a busy Monday morning in November,” says Affriya. “If there are suddenly hundreds more orders sitting in your system, can your warehouse get them out? Can your courier partners absorb the volume? And, importantly, can you see quickly enough when something has gone wrong?”

Affriya says retailers don’t need to predict their exact Black Friday volumes. They do need to know where their operation starts to strain, and have a plan for absorbing additional orders when demand moves beyond expectations.

He suggests focusing on a few practical areas before peak-season systems are locked down.

Prepare for Unpredictable Order Volumes

Testing whether a website can handle increased traffic is only one part of peak-season preparation. Retailers should put the entire order journey under pressure, from checkout and stock allocation through to picking, packing, dispatch and delivery. Testing different order volumes can show where delays or manual work start creeping in, giving teams time to address those pressure points before peak demand arrives.

“Don’t just test whether someone can buy from you, test whether you can actually fulfil what you’ve sold,” says Affriya.

Build the Right Courier Mix

Retailers should understand how much additional volume their delivery and fulfilment partners can accommodate, particularly on their busiest routes and trading days. That also means looking at the mix of courier partners available and understanding which are best suited to different delivery areas, service requirements, costs and order volumes.

They should also know what happens when things don’t go according to plan. If one delivery option becomes constrained, is there another available? How quickly can orders be moved? Who makes that decision?

“Peak season exposes dependencies that are easy to ignore during normal trading,” says Affriya. “If your delivery operation relies heavily on one provider or one process, you want to know where that risk sits before volumes spike.”

Keep Shipping Costs Under Control

Higher order volumes don’t automatically translate into better margins if fulfilment and delivery costs rise with them. Retailers should understand what they are spending to fulfil and deliver each order, and where unnecessary costs start appearing as volumes increase.

That includes looking beyond headline courier rates to factors such as delivery area, service level, failed delivery attempts and the cost of moving orders between providers when capacity becomes constrained. Having multiple delivery options gives retailers more room to balance cost, capacity and service during peak periods.

Find aqnd Reduce Fulfilment Bottlenecks

A retailer may have enough website capacity to handle twice its usual traffic while its warehouse can only comfortably process 20% more orders. Another may have warehouse capacity but run into courier collection limits.

Affriya recommends retailers model what happens if order volumes increase by 20%, 30% and even 50% over a short period, then use those scenarios to identify where additional capacity, alternative processes or courier options may be needed.

“You are not trying to predict the future perfectly. You are looking for the point where something breaks, so you can fix it before peak season.”

Spot Problems Early Enough to Act

When thousands of orders are moving through an operation, problems are inevitable. The bigger issue is how long it takes the retailer to spot them.

Teams should be able to see orders that haven’t left the warehouse, missed collections, parcels that have stopped moving and failed delivery attempts without waiting for a customer to complain. The earlier those exceptions are visible, the more opportunity there is to reroute an order, change delivery options or intervene before the problem reaches the customer.

That matters because the delivery is ultimately the part of an online transaction that happens in the customer’s world.

“The customer doesn’t care which system failed or which courier had a capacity problem,” says Affriya. “They bought from the retailer. That’s the brand they associate with the experience.”

South Africa’s online retail market has now reached a point where rapid growth is taking place on top of an already substantial base. For Affriya, that makes peak-season preparation less about preparing for one unusually busy weekend and more about building an operation that can absorb higher volumes without service levels slipping or fulfilment and delivery costs eroding the value of that growth.

“Growth is what every retailer wants,” he says. “The question is whether the rest of the business is ready when it arrives.”

When fuel prices rise, the first cost most businesses notice is the fuel bill. For companies moving goods around South Africa, however, that is only the beginning.

Transport sits underneath almost every part of the supply chain. Raw materials have to reach factories, finished products have to reach warehouses, goods have to move between distribution centres and retailers need stock delivered to their stores.

That means an increase in fuel costs can work its way through several stages before a product reaches the customer.

The Competition Commission’s latest Cost of Living Report highlights just how significant that pressure has become. Petrol prices increased by 26% between January and July 2026, with higher fuel and transport costs adding to production, logistics and distribution costs across the economy.

So where does that extra cost actually go?

It Starts With the Truck

For a transport operator, higher fuel prices are an immediate operating cost.

A truck still has to travel the same distance, carry the same load and use roughly the same amount of fuel. If diesel becomes more expensive, the cost of making that journey increases.

Fuel is not the only cost involved. Trucks also require maintenance, tyres, insurance, drivers and financing. But fuel is one of the costs most directly affected by changes in international oil markets and local fuel pricing.

Transport companies therefore have to decide how much of an increase they can absorb and how much needs to be reflected in their rates.

That is where the cost starts moving through the wider supply chain.

The Raw Material has to Get There Too

Consider a manufacturer producing a food product.

Before anything reaches the factory, ingredients, packaging and other materials may have travelled considerable distances. Those goods could have been transported from farms, processors, ports, importers or other manufacturers.

Higher transport costs can therefore appear before production has even started.

The manufacturer then has its own transport requirements. Finished goods need to leave the factory and move to a warehouse, distribution centre or directly to a customer.

The same fuel increase can consequently affect a product more than once as it moves through the network.

That is one reason why transport costs cannot be viewed in isolation.

Warehouses Don’t Make the Problem Disappear

It is easy to think of a warehouse as the point where transport temporarily stops.

In reality, goods may enter and leave a warehouse several times before reaching their final destination.

A product could arrive from a manufacturer, be stored, moved to another distribution centre and then delivered to a retailer. Each movement involves transport.

Warehousing itself also has costs, including electricity, labour, equipment and property. But transport remains part of the equation whenever goods need to be moved in or out.

For businesses operating large distribution networks, even relatively small increases in the cost of each journey can add up quickly.

Then the Product Reaches the Retailer

By the time a product arrives at a shop, its journey may already have involved several transport legs.

That does not mean the retailer simply adds every additional transport cost to the shelf price.

Businesses have different margins and different levels of bargaining power. Some may absorb part of the increase. Others may negotiate new prices with suppliers or transport providers. Some costs may be spread across a large number of products.

The important point is that there is no single point where a fuel-price increase becomes a retail-price increase.

It moves through a network of commercial decisions.

That is why two products can be affected differently by the same increase in fuel costs.

Distance Matters

The impact is also not the same for every business.

A manufacturer located close to its customers may have a very different transport profile from one that relies on long-distance road freight.

A retailer supplied from a nearby distribution centre faces different costs from one receiving stock from hundreds of kilometres away.

The same applies to imported goods. Products arriving through a South African port may still need to travel significant distances by road or rail before reaching a warehouse or customer.

The further a product has to travel, and the more times it has to be moved, the more opportunities there are for transport costs to influence the overall cost of getting it to market.

Not Every Increase Reaches the Customer Immediately

There is another reason the relationship between fuel and prices is more complicated than it first appears.

Businesses do not necessarily change their prices every time fuel moves.

A transport contract may have a fixed period. A manufacturer may have already purchased its inputs. A retailer may have stock sitting in a warehouse that was transported under an earlier cost structure.

This creates a delay between a change in transport costs and its eventual effect elsewhere in the supply chain.

It can also work in reverse.

When fuel costs fall, businesses may not immediately reduce prices because other costs have changed, contracts have not yet been renegotiated or existing stock was purchased when transport was more expensive.

The Competition Commission has raised concerns about this pattern in several essential markets, noting that some prices can rise quickly when costs increase but fall more slowly when those costs decline.

The Cost Doesn’t Always Stop With Transport

This is where the bigger supply-chain picture becomes important.

A transport cost increase can affect more than the price of moving a product.

If logistics becomes more expensive, businesses may reconsider how frequently they replenish stock, how much inventory they hold, which suppliers they use or where warehouses are located.

A manufacturer might look for a supplier closer to its factory. A retailer might review delivery routes. A logistics operator might try to improve vehicle utilisation to make each trip more productive.

In other words, rising transport costs can change decisions throughout the supply chain, not simply the price charged for a truck journey.

Can Businesses Reduce The Impact?

They cannot control the international oil price, but they can control how efficiently they use transport.

Better route planning can reduce unnecessary kilometres. Higher vehicle utilisation can spread the cost of a journey across more goods. Better load planning can reduce the number of trips required.

The same applies to the wider network.

If a business can source some products closer to its customers, reduce empty return journeys or position stock more strategically, it may be able to reduce the amount of transport required in the first place.

These decisions become more important when fuel prices are high.

The Question Isn’t Just What Transport Costs

South Africa’s latest fuel-price shock is a useful reminder that transport is woven into almost every part of the economy.

The question for businesses is therefore not simply “How much more will our trucks cost?”

It is “How much more will it cost to move everything our business needs, and how many times will those goods have to move before they reach the customer?”

That is a much bigger calculation.

For supply-chain managers, the answer may involve changing routes, suppliers, warehouse locations, delivery schedules or inventory strategies.

For consumers, the eventual impact may simply appear as a higher price on the shelf.

Between those two points is an entire supply chain — and that is where the extra cost goes.

Not long ago, most deliveries followed a fairly predictable route. Products arrived at a large distribution centre, were stored until needed and then transported to stores or customers across the country.

That model still plays an important role, but changing customer expectations are reshaping the way many businesses think about warehousing.

Today, shoppers expect groceries in under an hour, online orders within a day or two and accurate delivery updates every step of the way. Meeting those expectations isn’t always about driving faster. Increasingly, it’s about storing products closer to where customers already are.

Bigger Isn’t Always Better

For years, businesses focused on building large distribution centres that could supply entire regions from a single location. Centralising inventory reduced operating costs and made stock easier to manage.

As online shopping has grown, however, a different challenge has emerged.

Sending every order from one large facility often means longer delivery distances, increased transport costs and less flexibility during busy periods.

That’s why many retailers are complementing their larger distribution centres with smaller fulfilment facilities positioned closer to urban areas.

Speed Starts Inside the Warehouse

Businesses such as Checkers have shown how customer expectations have changed. Services like Sixty60 have raised the bar for grocery deliveries, making rapid order fulfilment part of everyday retail rather than a premium offering.

Behind those deliveries is a network designed for speed. Products are stored closer to customers, picked quickly and dispatched within minutes of an order being placed.

Retailers such as Takealot and Amazon South Africa are also investing in fulfilment networks that shorten the distance between inventory and customers, helping reduce delivery times while improving service levels.

It’s Not About Replacing Large Warehouses

Smaller fulfilment centres aren’t replacing traditional distribution centres.

Instead, they’re becoming another layer within the supply chain.

Large facilities continue receiving bulk stock, managing inventory and supplying regional networks. Smaller urban facilities focus on processing customer orders quickly, allowing businesses to respond to growing demand for faster deliveries without placing unnecessary pressure on their main warehouses.

Each type of facility has a different role, but together they create a more flexible distribution network.

The Warehouse Is Getting Closer

As delivery expectations continue to evolve, businesses are rethinking where inventory should be stored rather than simply how quickly it can be transported.

For many organisations, that means bringing products closer to customers, reducing the distance between an online order and the front door. It’s a reminder that faster deliveries don’t always begin with the truck. More often, they begin with where the warehouse is located in the first place.