Supporting our Farmers

Promoting rural economic development is one of the best ways to improve the quality of life for stakeholders in all four countries in which we operate.

Over the last several years, we’ve contributed towards changing the socio-economic landscape by investing time and resources in partnering with our farmers.

• One of the key ways we’re doing this is by helping establish small-scale farmers in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. These economic development initiatives include the provision of extension services and partnering with governments and other third parties to help farmers unlock funding.
• Our Tongaat Hulett Cane and Rural Development Unit (CRDU) works specifically with cane suppliers, from large commercial farmers to small-scale ones, helping them increase cane quality and yield.
• We also support these grower communities with skills transfer, either through in-house training and mentoring programmes or through providing bursaries for formal training. In addition, we partner with agricultural colleges to grow sugarcane farming skills taught within their programmes.
• An example of these initiatives is our successful partnership with The Job Fund in 2014. Through a joint investment of R305 million, we’ve developed almost 11 000 hectares of sugarcane which continues to benefit 5 897 people based in Northern KwaZulu-Natal.

These initiatives form part of our broader Socio-Economic Development (SED) and Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) frameworks, which are focused on growing sustainable rural communities and designed to diversify our supplier base with a special focus on developing economies through localisation.