Success brews at tea farms

Even with the end of the tea harvesting season approaching, there is still much to celebrate on the Magwa and Majola tea estates.

The two estates in the Eastern Cape, nestled in rolling hills, rank among some of the world’s biggest exporters of tea, trading with countries such as Mauritius and Malawi.

The fine blends from the two estates have also been named second-best in the world, according to the Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency (ECRDA).

About 500 workers, more than half of whom are employed on a permanent basis, were pleasantly surprised by a visit by Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane last week.

He visited the estates to assess the progress made since the revival of the mega project late last year.

For years, operations at the estates in Lusikisiki and Port St Johns have been in disarray, with workers going for months without getting salaries, until the provincial government was forced to intervene.

It employed a business rescue practitioner last year to try to turn their fortunes around.

A sum of R45-million was also injected by Qoboshiyane’s department as part of a R148-million intervention endorsed by the provincial government.

“We feel uplifted. The local economy is uplifted,” ECRDA chief executive Thozi Gwanya said.

“A lot of achievements have been made the last couple of months and one is that we have been named the second-best producers of tea in the world.”

Gwanya said the ranking was contained in a report given to them by Span Africa, a research organisation based in Kenya. India was at number one and Kenya third.

“Even if our quantity has fallen, we remain strong. We remain the biggest tea farm in the country,” Gwayna said.

“One of the challenges we face though, is that we don’t have our own blending machine – and very few companies in the country do.

“We’d love to have our own blending machines so that we can do everything all at once, right here.

“We’d be in a position to take on the cartels in the United Kingdom which are dominating the market,” Gwanya said.

Qoboshiyane said he was happy to see workers busy concluding their harvest.

“We are happy for the workers, who now get paid monthly. Many had lost hope when there was no plan, trees were overgrowing, there was no pruning, no fertiliser, and no direction at all before we came in to help but now they are working.

“We congratulate them for their contribution in the revival of the estates and we hope they will look after these jobs because there are many people who are unemployed,” Qoboshiyane said.

“I am happy because business rescue and not liquidation was a good decision and the money we asked from the legislature for this work is paying off.

“We are pleased to see retailers interested in buying some of the tea from these villages. The factory is working well and the tea plantations are showing quality.

“We also want to diversify crops planted here, invest in agro-tourism to tap into the Magwa Falls and use the golf course and the lodge in the estate.”

The two estates are being incorporated to form a single estate. They have harvested more than 330 tons in the last seven months, with the projected income at about R7.5-million.