News24 | Pick n Pay appoints new CEO

Spencer Sonn spent most of his career at Woolworths in South Africa before moving to New Zealand in 2021.

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Pick n Pay has announced that the chief customer officer of Woolworths, Spencer Sonn, will succeed Sean Summers.

Sonn has been appointed CEO designate with effect from 1 February next year, he will officially take over from Summers in May 2028, when the current CEO’s contract ends.

The JSE-listed retailer said Spencer would work closely with Summers, who was appointed in late 2023 to turn around the fortunes of the embattled retailer.

Pick n Pay said it was confident that Spencer’s extensive local and international retail experience, leadership abilities and understanding of the food and grocery sector would help him build on the progress already made in the group’s turnaround.

Before he was appointed to the Woolworths job in South Africa, Sonn was the managing director of Woolworths New Zealand for four years. The New Zealand retailer is owned by the Australian Woolworths Group and not associated with South Africa’s Woolworths.

Sonn spent most of his career at Woolworths in South Africa before moving to New Zealand. He was managing director of Woolworths in SA from 2015 to 2021.

He matriculated in 1988 from St Joseph’s Marist College in Rondebosch, Cape Town, and completed a general management programme at Harvard Business School in the US.

Summers said that throughout the group’s engagements with him, Sonn had “expressed enormous admiration for the values and founding principles that Pick n Pay was built on. He considers it a privilege to be joining a brand, a business and a team that plays such a vital role in the lives of millions of South Africans.”