ZZ2 : Growing for the Future
ZZ2’s farming roots date back to the 19th century, the van Zyl family continuing to honour its legacy while looking ahead to the future of an ever-changing agricultural sector.
ZZ2
World-Leading Practices for Long-term ValueWriter:Emily JarvisProject Manager:Josh HylandZZ2 is the brand name for a farming organisation which now supplies more than 40 percent of commercially traded tomatoes in South Africa.It is a fast growing player in the production, packaging and marketing of avocados (avos) while onions and deciduous fruit are also gaining importance in the fruit and vegetable basket offered to customers. Livestock has always been part of the ZZ2 value proposition and includes a Pinzgauer cattle herd from the Austrian Alps and the indigenous Nguni cattle. From these two breeds, a new breed has been developed at ZZ2, the PinZ²yl.Farming operations are spread across South Africa, the Group consisting of various independent companies managed under the ZZ2 umbrella with a turnover exceeding R1 billion per annum. ZZ2’s employees match this status by increasingly representing a multicultural African society within a multilingual environment.The company extended the services provided to the internal convertors of production, packaging and marketing value with carefully considered joint ventures. It has significant shareholding in an international commercial seedling nursery, an online fresh produce trading platform, a box manufacturing plant, a staging depot for fresh produce, and production facilities for biological inputs to compost, compost tea and fermented plant extracts. Joint ventures in primary production include a date farm in Namibia on the Orange River.Inspiration and missionsThe ZZ2 trademark is a well known brand in South Africa. Originally a cattle brand it has become associated with the company and excellence. The Sepedi/Northern Sotho phrase “Ke Tswa Tsweo” was added to the trademark in…
