Publications
Partners
The Department of Trade and Industry’s Black Industrialists Scheme aims to unlock the industrial potential that exists within black-owned and managed businesses through deliberate, targeted and well-defined financial and non-financial interventions. Launched in 2016, the transformation policy has produced many success stories. This is one of them:
You may not have heard of the Dürsots Group, but there’s a pretty good chance that you used and enjoyed one of its brands – All Joy, Dürsots, Veri Peri or Earthwise – today.
A family-run enterprise, with chief executive and chairperson Ismail Darsot at the helm, Dürsots is an integrated group of companies that has been engaged in the South African food industry for the past 30 years.
Based in Modjadjiskloof in Tzaneen, Limpopo, the business trades mainly in the canning, bottling and packaging industries. Apart from the Tzaneen operation, the company has factories in Eikenhof in the south of Johannesburg and Alrode in Alberton.
Registered as Eastern Trading, Dürsots is one of the leading black-owned and managed food manufacturers in the country, making it one of the many success stories of Black Industrialists Scheme (BIS), an incentive scheme by the department of trade and industry .
Dürsots processes thousands of tons of fresh tomatoes into tomato paste and manufactures cans of tomato and onion mix, whole and diced tomatoes and tomato seshebo, as well as other food products.
The unemployment rate in Modjadjiskloof is 70%. The company has created 70 permanent jobs and because tomato growing is seasonal – from April to October – it employs hundreds of contract workers. This has been made easier through help from the BIS.
The company has also established a “tomato outgrower scheme” to help small-scale farmers sell their products. This has benefited individual farmers and cooperative local farmers from Tzaneen, Giyani and Musina.
The scheme contracted 80 developing farmers and 10 established (commercial) farmers, all of whom were trained and supervised in the growth of crops. In 2016, about R1.2 million worth of seeds were distributed to farmers and last year that figure shot up to almost R6 million.
So far the project has received a total investment of R120 million. the dti approved more than R48 million, while Standard Bank committed R42 million for debt funding and Darsot made an equity contribution of R30 million to the project.
- Dürsots, whose catch phrase is “Class in a can”, manufactures branded and private-label canned vegetables. It also produces mayonnaise, peanut butter, bottled water and tomato paste.
- AH Vest is a 95%-owned subsidiary of Eastern Trading and is listed on the alternative board for smaller companies on the JSE. Its main business is manufacturing tomato, pasta and spaghetti sauces, Veri Peri African hot sauce and marinades.
- Tin Can Man, which is 100% owned by Eastern Trading, operates two divisions – manufacturing tin cans and plastic bottles.
- Eastern Trading owns 85% of Legacy Food, which manufactures a drinking sorghum porridge that is available on the market under the brand Motoho wa Mabele. The intellectual property and recipe was acquired from the original owner, who remains a director in the company and is a BEE partner. The group is particularly proud of this investment because it advances women empowerment.
- Aqua Zone is the “sweetest mineral water on the market”. At present it is supplied only to wholesalers, but that is set to change soon.
- Although Eastern Trading has a versatile in-house logistics company, it plans to resurrect Truck and Fleet Hire, a dormant company that will provide warehousing and distribution/logistics.
