The rise of macadamia production in KZN
The macadamia industry has offered highly attractive investment opportunities during the past few years. With prices increasing significantly and an apparently insatiable demand, the crop has provided good returns for farmers in the Lowveld of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, and on KwaZulu-Natal’s (KZN) South Coast. Now, as uncertainty about the continued profitability of the sugar industry prevails, farmers further north in KZN are expanding their farms to include nut orchards.
Boosting the prospects for this industry is the ever-growing number of processing facilities for macadamias in Pongola, northern KZN. The investment from industry role players is perhaps the biggest indication of the potential of macadamias in this region.
AmberMacs has a facility where nuts can be delivered and then sent to Mpumalanga for further processing. Marquis Macadamias has gone one step further, erecting a full nutin-shell processing facility in the area.
South Africa’s macadamia industry is expanding by over 3 000ha/year and the planted area has reached around 30 000ha. While Pongola’s
