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Swaziland: Local baby vegetable grower exports to Woolworths, Europe

A Swazi baby vegetable grower exports to Woolworths and Europe and has created 97 job opportunities for locals. This is after Sidemane Farming Investments Managing Director Themba Dlamini was financed by the Swaziland Finance Development Company (FINCORP) with a loan of over E1.7 million in 2006 to start his operations based at Hawane.

Dlamini’s core business is growing baby vegetables and packaging them to external markets as locally there is no significant one.

During a FINCORP tour, he said his market was Woolworths Stores in South Africa, the Johannesburg vegetable market and to some countries in Europe.

The managing director holds no agricultural education background but was adamant that he leant the dynamics of the sector from a colleague. He is a motor mechanic by profession. He said in totality, the vegetables were produced from land measuring about 46 hectares and wanted to expand this even further.

 “The business started badly because during the first year, all our produce was destroyed by hail and we struggled to service our loan with FINCORP, but now the business is at its peak as a result of the sustainable markets we are linked to. Sdemane makes over E3 million annual turnovers and we are humbled by the help FINCORP is giving us as they are contributing a lot to the country’s economy. This business also advocates for women empowerment as 99% of the staff that is packaging inside this firm are women, the staff is continuously trained,” Dlamini said.

Dlamini said his focus was on cucumber, green beans, bronjols, baby corn, chillies, brassicas, peas to mention a few.

He said this year, he aimed at doubling the annual turnover because they were less natural disasters like heavy winds, snow and hail heavily experienced in the areas of production.

Dlamini said producing for the local market was not in his plans for now.

“The challenge we have is that the market is small and supplying it could be a drain of resources from the business. Supermarkets including Pick n Pay and Shoprite need the vegetables but the problem is that they need it in small quantities than to where I am currently exporting,” he explained.

He said there was pressure on him from the markets to produce more vegetables because the major baby vegetables farmers in Zambia had scaled down their production as labourers wages has sky rocketed which impacted on the produce.

Source: www.observer.org.sz
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