AGRICULTURAL NEWS - When a group of Letsitele citrus farmers could no longer afford packaging material, they started making it themselves. Today, their business is a major industry supplier.
In the 1980s, South Africa’s citrus farmers had little scope to grow their profits; they were caught between high input costs and fixed citrus prices set by the Citrus Marketing Board.
The highest input cost of all was that of packaging material, but with carton price increases showing no sign of slowing down, many farmers were at their wits’ end.
The members of the Lower Letaba Citrus Cooperative (LLCC), a group of independent packhouses, realised that they had to urgently find a practical way of mitigating these costs.
“Initially, we decided to expand further up the value chain,” recalls Milaan Thalwitzer,
LLCC chairperson at the time. Discussions on acquiring shares in one of the region’s carton suppliers followed, but ultimately these came to nothing.
