A shift in society towards more sustainable and environmentally friendly living, which creates demand for more indigenous and water-wise plants, especially fynbos, planted the seeds of success for the local black-owned nursery De Fynne.
Nestled between the Cape’s finest vineyards within the fabulous Fynbos Kingdom, the multi award-winning nursery is known for growing fynbos and agricultural crops.
Founders of De Fynne, Elton Jefthas and Jacky Goliath, who were already working in the agriculture and horticulture industry, saw this gap in the market, identified it as their niche and rose to the occasion by establishing De Fynne Nursery in 2001.
De Fynne’s mission is to provide a consistent supply of high-quality indigenous plants to the nursery, retail, landscaping and agricultural industry in South Africa.
The nursery grew from humble beginnings, starting out as a home backyard garden, which could only grow 1 000 plants, but has now established itself as one of SA’s leading fynbos and agricultural seedling growing experts on a 22-hectare farm.
The demand for fynbos, indigenous and water-wise plants continued to grow throughout the early 2000s, creating the need for more land for De Fynne to increase their production. In 2005, the nursery moved to a rented site of 0,5-hectare land in Kylemore.
In only a matter of years, with two tunnels, two employees and approximately 20 000 plants to maintain, the water source became too limited and the nursery had outgrown the site.
In 2008 the business moved to a 1,5 hectare rented area in Simondium, between Paarl and Franschhoek, which hosted about 600 000 plants, including fynbos plants such as protea, leucospermum, leucadendron, erica, and buchu, as well as fruit trees, research material and agricultural crops.
De Fynne is a 100% black-owned company and a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, and prides itself on being a representative of people of colour within the industry.
De Fynne firmly believes in giving back to the community and empowering others as they are empowered. One of their main objectives is job creation and they have grown from a labour force of 15 permanent employees with an additional 10 casual labourers during peak seasons to 22 permanent workers and 15 casual workers.
This was made possible by their expansion milestones of again moving to a 22-ha premises in Paarl from which they currently operate.
As the market trends have changed, De Fynne has become one of the specialist nurseries conducting contract growing for both the horticultural and agricultural sectors. They are a Global Gap certified and Farming for the Future certified nursery and service retailers, wholesalers, research institutions, commercial farms, wine estates and landscapers. They are proud suppliers of leading retailers Woolworths and Pick n Pay.
One of the greatest challenges which the founders have faced was the difficulty of breaking into the Western Cape agriculture and horticulture industry as a small black-owned nursery. Formerly, this industry was monopolised by old networks which created a barrier to entry for new establishments.
“We realised that our BEE status will not sell the plants and this realisation prompted the founders to rely on quality and value for money to speak for their brand,” co-founder Jefthas related.
“However, this took time. De Fynne has always prioritised and taken pride in proving that black businesses in agriculture can produce great quality products.”
In 2019 De Fynne was approached by Distell to join a programme where they would supply farmers who are Distell apple suppliers with apple trees. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 and strategy changes, the programme was not implemented.
However, this marked the beginning of a relationship between Distell and De Fynne. The relationship opened an opportunity to fund the nursery’s expansion as a part of Distell’s supplier development initiative. De Fynne took the opportunity with both hands and attributes a great deal of their success to the support they received from Distell.
De Fynne continues to grow and as a part of their agricultural expansion strategy are now growing plums which they are exporting.
Since starting the nursery in 2001, De Fynne has received numerous awards including: first prize in the Plant Stand Exhibition organised by the Cape Green Forum in Stellenbosch in February 2012; first prize in Female Entrepreneur 2011 in the commercial sector in the Western Province, awarded by Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 2011; and The Most Influential Women in Agriculture in SADC (Southern Africa) by CEO Magazine in July 2014.
