JSE-listed fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer Tiger Brands has, over the past few years, been investing in its farming value chain to get closer to the source where products are cultivated and increase localisation of its procurement.

Most recently, Tiger Brands invested in equipment, including harvesters, for two farmers near Bronkhorstspruit, who started with deliveries of small white beans to the company’s Koo baked beans manufacturing facility in Boksburg, in June.

Having facilitated the investment through local black-owned emerging farmer aggregator company SE Holdings, together with other partners such as energy company Exxaro and the Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency (Sefda),

Tiger Brands has derived 53 t of small white beans, or haricot beans, from the area for the first time, which helps to offset imports of this input into the Koo baked beans product.   

Tiger Brands last year imported 2 500 t of small white beans from North America at 30% higher prices, owing to a poor local season.

The group currently sources 83% of its bean requirement locally, while 17% is imported.

The two Bronkhorstspruit farming operations form part of a broader contracting programme involving 14 South African farmers to help Tiger Brands offset imports of small white beans. 

Tiger Brands Culinary MD Dumo Mfini confirms the company will further scale investment to these two farms, targeting to derive 15% of its llocal bean supply from the area.

The group ultimately aims to procure 28 000 t/y of small white beans from local growers, compared with the current 19 000 t/y, by 2030, which will involve more investment in its agriculture value chain.

The company produces about 1.5-million cans of Koo baked beans a day.

While no irrigation was needed so far on the two Bronkhorstspruit farms owing to ample rains in the area early in the year, SE Holdings CEO Mpumi Maesela confirms the partnership will invest in irrigation for the farms by next season, if necessary.

The farms will also receive drones to be used for fertilising and field monitoring.

In turn, Sefda aims to unlock more arable land for small white bean farming in the Bronkhorstspruit region.

Notably, through the support of SE Holdings and its partners, the two female black-owned farms have managed to create permanent and seasonal jobs.

SE Holdings is a beneficiary of Exxaro’s small enterprise development programme and also raises development funding from other institutions such as Sefda, with Tiger Brands having solved the access to market challenge for emerging farmers by being a long-term offtaker.

Maesela emphasises the need for more ecosystem approaches in agriculture whereby partnerships can unlock more value in more commodities, especially where farmers face challenges they had no hand in creating – including weather events and high input costs.

She calls for more bold investment to increase yield, profitability and sustainability for emerging farmers.

BAKED BEAN PROCESS

Harvested beans, after being harvested and packed by hand in wind rows left to dry on the farm, are transport to cleaning facilities where soil, stones and other foreign objects are removed mechanically. The beans are then sorted by colour and size before a destoning and soaking process.

The beans are brined and sauced before moving to a rotary cooker where the beans are cooked inside of a sealed can, which will soon be produced with an easy to open mechanism.

The cans are cooled and sent through an incubation process for ten days before quality sample checks are performed. Koo Baked Beans, which started production in 1946, is ranked as South Africa’s number one baked bean product and is found in seven out of ten homes.

Tiger Brands’ Koo manufacturing facility in Boksburg comprises six canning lines, five labelling lines and four packaging lines. The canning facility can process 150 t of small white beans a day, producing more than nine-million cases of cans a year, or 240-million cans a year.

*Marleny Arnoldi participated in Tiger Brands’ Heritage Tour 2025, including Koo baked beans’ journey from soil to plate, on June 6.