Hortfin the blended-finance scheme created to facilitate and enable transformation in the fruit, table grape and wine industries’ value chain, has announced a new partnership with First National Bank (FNB) at an event at Klein Joostenberg, Muldersvlei, yesterday. Hortfin, comprehensive…
The Jobs Fund Initiatives is the Deciduous Fruit Development Chamber’s Commercialisation Programme. It started in 2016 and is aimed at graduating a group of smallholder farmers to commercial status. Hortgro and the DFDC-SA recently went on a monitoring and evaluation…
The success story of the Haarlem Community by Gerrit Rautenbach It all started many years ago because of water. In 1963 the then Coloured Affairs Department of the governing National Party of South Africa bought the farm Anhalt because the…
Competitive canoeing shaped Paul Lombard’s life. Literally and figuratively. But it all happened because of a drought. Gerrit Rautenbach explains. You can clearly see that Paul Lombard, proud manager director of Eve Brand, an apple and pear farm near Misgund…
Ten noticeable years of transformation The Pome and Stone Fruit Industry have put their money where their mouths are since 2010 regarding transformation and sustainable development. Over the last 10 years, transformation initiatives refocused on training, worker welfare, skills development…
Ricard Myburgh, a 27-year old apple and pear farmer from Vyeboom in the Western Cape, received the Young Entrepreneur Award from the Jobs Fund last week. Myburgh, who has been farming on the family farm, Cortina Farms, for the past…
By Carme Naude Najwah Allie-Edries, the head of the Jobs Fund visited the Ceres region’s beneficiaries on 7 February. The tour started at La Vouere where Raymond Koopstad welcomed them together with his strategic partners Georgie Hewitt and Pieter Wolfaardt…
Through their involvement in the National Treasury’s Jobs Fund Initiative, the Western Cape and Eastern Cape Departments of Agriculture together with HORTGRO, are showing what can be done when public and private enterprises work together. Text: Glenneis Kriel The Jobs…
Over the past two decades, Hortgro has been playing a pivotal role in the transformation of the stone and pome fruit industry. In 2007, the association along with the Western Cape Department of Agriculture initiated the tree (or “boompie”) project…
Richard Myburgh started out as a fruit hawker. His business was small but grew quickly. Soon he outgrew the packhouse that he was renting and it was time for him to buy his own farm. Today, despite some serious drought…
Over the last 17 months the Jobs Fund in collaboration with the stone and pome fruit industry have created 483 jobs in the deciduous fruit sector. The Jobs Fund is a National Treasury initiative looking to co-finance public, private and…
Over the next few months we will highlight some of the projects and programmes at HORTGRO. This month Elise-Marie Steenkamp talks to Louis van Zyl, HORTGRO’s General Manager, and his admin and financial team who do astonishing work for the deciduous…