DE FYNNE NURSERIES
DE FYNNE NURSERIES
De Fynne Blossoms with Fynbos in Western Cape PRODUCTION: David Napier
‘Only the finest plants’ is the strapline for the De Fynne Nursery, a plant paradise, based in Paarl. The company supplies ornamental, exotic and agricultural plants to businesses across South Africa and, now on a 22-hectare farm, De Fynne is looking to grow its market share. Managing Director, Jacky Goliath tells Enterprise Africa more about overcoming challenges to make her company a national success.
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De Fynne Nursery, the small agricultural business blossoming out of the Cape floristic region, is preparing itself for explosive growth in 2019. Founded in 2002 as a backyard operation by a partnership made up of a small-scale farmer and a part-time entrepreneur, De Fynne’s ambitions are now rather more grand than they were in the beginning.
Jacky Goliath and Elton Jefthas began their journey growing Coleonema, Phylica and Cyclopia in his garden. The pair produced around 1000 units of each per year. “His background is more financial and strategic, and I am the hands-on farmer, making things happen,” Goliath tells Enterprise Africa. At the time, the business was like a hobby. The growing of quality plants for the small customer base was more
important than growing the business. But after success with its three core products, De Fynne began to respond to demand and grow into indigenous, water-wise, fynbos plants. South Africa’s fynbos is famous – beautiful, strong, and only present in the Western and Eastern Cape. It grows in acid sands or nutrient-poor soils derived from Table Mountain sandstones and is perfectly adapted to the unique
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// WHEN WE STARTED, WE WERE PLAYING AROUND WITH PLANTS AND WE NEVER THOUGHT WE WOULD GROW TO THIS SIZE. WE NEVER KNEW BIG COMPANIES WOULD COME TO US TO DO BUSINESS AND WE NEVER THOUGHT WE WOULD HAVE A BIG STAFF COMPONENT // conditions of the region. Growing fynbos is not easy. Certain groups of plants can be extremely difficult to raise, even for professionals. But De Fynne has tweaked and adjusted its product range over the years to now include many different shrubs, Leucadendron, Leucospermums and Proteas. Most know fynbos for the number of Protea-members in its mix (particularly the King Protea, the country’s national flower), a symbol of hope. The De Fynne Nursery business is the perfect example of what can be achieved when determination and hope is at the core of everything you do. “As of October 17th, we were 17 years old and it feels like forever,” remembers Goliath. “When we started, we were playing around with plants and we never thought we would grow to
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this size. We never knew big companies would come to us to do business and we never thought we would have a big staff component. I would not change anything that I have done or anything I have learned.” From two, the company is now home to 30 people, and even more when the farm is busy. De Fynne’s products are found all over South Africa, and some of the country’s biggest retailers have partnered with the company, helping to build a thriving, sustainable business. REACHING CAPACITY In 2005, De Fynne moved from Jefthas’s garden to a half-hectare site in Kylemore, close to Stellenbosch, in order to meet the growing demand from its clients. At this new site, two full-time employees were hired, and two full
grow-tunnels were installed to help maintain 20,000 plants. But after three years, it became clear that the water supply to the site was insufficient to sustain the growing business and, in 2008, De Fynne moved again, this time just 10km away, to a 1.5-hectare site in Simondium. The new site allowed the company to flourish, with room for 600,000 plants and 15 full-time and 10 part-time employees. The fynbos range grew quickly to include plants such as Erica and Buchu, as well as fruit trees, research material and agricultural crops. But again, the company outgrew its home and was forced to move once more to a new space in Paarl. The 22-hectare farm is the perfect home for De Fynne and has opened up avenues into new markets. For Jacky Goliath, the challenge now is to make the most of the land available.
DE FYNNE NURSERIES
“We have a 22-hectare farm that we are currently working on. We are focussing on filling up this farm and making it productive before we will go looking for new land,” she says. “We have plums on one side and the wholesale nursery on the other. We are currently using 70-75% of the farm effectively, so we do have room to expand. “When we came onto this farm, there was some plum orchards but some of them were old varieties and old in age, so we are slowly pulling out the old trees and we will be planting those areas with more productive varieties. “All products from the nursery currently go into the South African market only. Our market share is small, so we believe there is still lots of room for us to grow. Our plums are harvested on our farm and are exported to European and Asian countries,” she adds.
One of the catalysts behind the development of the business has been a relationship with one of South Africa’s leading retailers, Woolworths. The national retail chain has, since 1931, put quality at the heart of everything it does, and according to Goliath, this matches perfectly with the ethos at De Fynne. “Woolworths is a high-quality brand,” she says. “Compared to other retailers in this country, Woolworths is the one that stands out when it comes to quality and the reason why our relationship works is because we supply quality products. We believe in our products and we are only selling quality products. “Woolworths is one of our biggest clients. We have been working with them for more than eight years and we wouldn’t be where we are today without their help. “We first encountered Woolworths
with an indigenous plant that we had only little stock of. At the time, we only had around 500 of them and we were actually surprised to hear that they would take such small quantities from us. We knew they were a big brand with many big stores, so we assumed we would need thousands of products to be a supplier to them. But they took us in and all of the products sold very well. The year after, they asked us to increase the volumes we supplied. Currently, we are doing a number of products for them, in much bigger volumes than what we started with.” From Paarl, De Fynne’s products are sold in Woolworths stores all over South Africa. “They move through Woolworths three DCs in Gauteng, KZN and the Western Cape. Lavender is our most popular product from July until October. Currently, blueberries are popular. We
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are sending them right across the country. With blueberries, people can harvest their own fruit. Woolworths has a grow your own range of products and people can take them home, nurture them, and harvest their own fruit.” As well as Woolworths, you can find De Fynne products in selected Builders Warehouse, Spar and specialist garden centres.
// THE ORIGIN OF OUR WATER IS THE BERG RIVER, AND IT DRIED UP IN FEBRUARY SO THERE WAS NO WATER FOR A LONG PERIOD. AT THE NURSERY, WE HAD TO THROW AWAY SOME OF OUR PLANTS AS WE COULD NOT WATER THEM //
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DROUGHT CHALLENGE Away from the challenge of growing a business from nothing, in an extremely challenging economic period, where agriculture has been in decline, De Fynne has had to deal with some of the worst droughts in recent history. In 2017, rainfall was low and the dams all but dried up. Cape Town’s water restrictions were fierce and De Fynne felt the brunt of the drought. “The fynbos is a water-wise product,” says Goliath. “In the nursery, it uses less water than a normal exotic. But, because it comes in a container, you still need to nurse it. It means the plant can’t let its roots into the ground to find water itself in open soil. In the nursery, we have to water on a daily basis. We have had water restrictions in place in the area meaning we couldn’t use the amount of water we needed across the nursery and the rest of the farm. The origin of our water is the Berg River, and it dried up in February so there was no water for a long period. At the nursery, we had to throw away some of our plants as we could not water them. We also had to decrease overall production
for fynbos and agricultural crops during that time. We have a borehole on our farm so for February, March and April we had to tap into the borehole to carry us through. We also started a recycling reservoir in the nursery, using the runoff from the nursery, bringing it back to a central point, and cleaning it for re-use.” Unfortunately, the water crisis is an ongoing issue. While ‘day zero’ was avoided and the regions dams have been somewhat restored, most agree that through the upcoming summer months, water will become scarce once again. Various restrictions are already in place and De Fynne has been looking at what it can do to secure its operations and be a responsible corporate citizen. “Of course, the drought was not good – it had a big effect. However, it did make us think about what else we could do to save water and run the business more sustainably,” admits Goliath. “We are aware that, for the next two to three years, we are going to struggle with water. People are scared about what will happen in February and March because it is the driest period and we really need water
DE FYNNE NURSERIES
// I OFTEN TELL PEOPLE THAT, YES, SOUTH AFRICAN LAW FORCES COMPANIES TO WORK WITH BLACK FARMERS OR BLACK ENTITIES BUT I BELIEVE PEOPLE CHOOSE TO WORK WITH US BECAUSE OF OUR QUALITY AND NOT JUST BECAUSE WE ARE A BLACK COMPANY AND YOU NEED US FOR YOUR SCORECARD // on the farm. We have the reservoir that we have built for recycling water – none of the run off is discarded. We are also looking at the irrigation systems we have and planning to use less overhead spraying and more drip irrigation. This is where water is dripped directly in to the pot rather than being sprayed on to the leaves and running away. There are many new methods that we are looking at. We are even looking at our potting soil and looking at using soil that keeps much more moisture over a longer period compared to the previous soil mix we used.” BUSY GROWING De Fynne holds the vision of ‘providing a consistent supply of high-quality indigenous plants to the nursery, retail, landscaping and agricultural industry of South Africa’ and to date, Goliath is pleased to report that this has largely been achieved. “I know that sometimes companies start with a vision and a mission and somewhere along the way you can
move away from it. I am happy to say that we are still sticking to our mission and we feel chuffed that we are still doing what we set out to - high quality products for the industry. Everything we do is about quality, and our relationship with Woolworths is proof of that.” And she is keen to point out that quality is what De Fynne stands for and wants to be known for. The effort that goes into producing fynbos sprouts is large and means it makes no sense to create an inferior product. “I often tell people that, yes, South African law forces companies to work with black farmers or black entities but I believe people choose to work with us because of our quality and not just because we are a black company and you need us for your scorecard. Our customers come back to us every time – they like what we do, they like what we stand for and I feel very comfortable saying that people work with us because of our quality products,” says Goliath. South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region faces its own challenges as so many plants are endangered and found nowhere else on earth. De Fynne is playing its small part in protecting and spreading the nature on its doorstep. Combining this idea with the development of new and in-demand products will undoubtedly see the company expand. “In the long-term, we will focus on our core which is fynbos and waterwise products – that is how we started and it’s a very important range now,” explains Goliath. “We have also added agricultural products. Ornamental and exotic plants are beautiful, but people need to eat. To diversify the business, we have started to work on agricultural products where we grow and sell fruit plants – that’s peaches, apples, pears which we supply to the commercial agricultural sector through a wholesale model. It also includes honey bush tea, olives, blueberries, cherries and many more. We are known as a nursery that focuses on both horticultural and agricultural products.”
This multi-focus will allow De Fynne to continue building its workforce, employing more people and upskilling for a richer and stronger industry. “The agricultural sector is one that is creating the most jobs. For a nursery, you need people to make cuttings – that is done by hand; the weeding and clearing is all done by hand; and we know that we will create more jobs – that’s a given,” says Goliath. And those jobs are valuable. Under the tutelage of a ‘Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries First Prize-winning entrepreneur’ and a ‘Most Influential Women in Agriculture 2014’, employees learn a lot, and their education is not limited to agri-skills. Jacky Goliath shares her experiences of running a business, and everything that goes with it, with everyone at De Fynne. “I am responsible for everything in the business – HR, health and safety, people management, production, sales, client relations, budgets, payments, and everything. I am now 30% in the office and 70% outside. This is a working farm, nursery and orchard. I am a farmer – I do everything.” Like the King Protea, which doesn’t flower for the first four or five years of its life, De Fynne has taken time to reach a mature state. Now that its reach covers South Africa, its reputation for quality is incontestable, and it continues to target increased market share, this growing company remains one to watch. “I wouldn’t change the failures we’ve had or anything we’ve been involved with. This business is my passion and it doesn’t feel like work. I stay on the farm – it’s a lifestyle. I enjoy every moment. Yes, times are stressful, especially in the South African agricultural context as a black female, but I am still going strong and very much enjoying what I am doing,” Goliath concludes.
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